Singatalur Lift Irrigation Project faces roadblocks

Bellary, Karnataka, May 8 (UNI) Notwithstanding Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's assurance that the Singatalur Lift Irrigation Project will be completed by March next year, the project, 80 per cent work on which has been completed, is facing many a challenge.

The big challenge posed in acquiring land was that the Government was not ready to immediately pay the compensation rate to the land losers at existing market price, hovering around Rs 1.50 lakhs to Rs 1.78 lakhs per acre.

Apart from this, the officials were yet to identify a new place to locate the displaced people. According to engineers working on the project, when water was stored in the barrage, about three villages would be submerged.

The farmers were up in arms against the completion of the project until they were compensated suitably for handing over their lands, which meant losing their livelihood and shifting to other modes of earning.

The foundation stone for the project was laid in 1992-93 with an estimated storage capacity of 7.64 tmcft of water to irrigate about 40,000 acres in Hadagli and surrounding villages. However, the project failed to see the light of the day till 1998. Deciding to have a larger outlook for the project, the then Irrigation Minister H K Patil revised the storage capacity to 18.55 tmcft to irrigate 1.67 lakh acres, including fields from Gadag and Mundaragi taluks, and supply drinking water to Gadag, thus escalating the project cost to Rs 597 crore.

Though leaders and farmers were unhappy over the project being extended to supply water to Mundaragi and Gadag taluks, work on first phase of the project progressed on a brisk note, with the Irrigation department restricting the storage capacity to 12.03 tmcft at an estimated cost of Rs 657 crore.

The crest gates would be ready for fixing by December and when the gates were fixed, the barrage would be ready to store water.

However, unless problems relating to land acquisition and shifting of villagers were solved, there was no hope of completing the project before March next.

UNI XR GD SKB1821