Organisational setup for irrigation projects in MP

Bhopal, July 17 (UNI) The Madhya Pradesh Government today decided to reconstitute organisational set up under the Water Resources Department for command area development programme of irrigation project.

The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here, an official release said here.

Under the decision, four level command area development set up would be constituted for execution and monitoring of the programme in command areas of major and medium irrigation projects.

A total of 61 posts had been sanctioned for the set up. As a result, there will be no additional financial burden on government exchequer. All the posts would be made available by surrendering and reorganising existing posts sanctioned for the Water Resources Department.

A state-level command area operation committee, headed by the chief secretary, will be constituted with an objective to finalise the policy and issue guidelines for the activities concerning the command area development set up at the apex level.

A command area development directorate would also be set up with its headquarters in the state capital by reorganising the existing state-level Ayacut cell. This would be headed by a director, who will be an officer of the Chief Engineer rank. The proposed director will be the member secretary of the state-level command operation committee.

The decision also provides for constitution of a command area development coordination committee to be headed by the divisional commissioner at each revenue division level.

Moreover, for execution of field operations, the project administrator would be controlling the divisional, sub-divisional set up etc. under the department.

A superintendent engineer of the department would be the project administrator.

At the same time, the project director shall be acting as the member secretary of the command area development coordination committee.

The committee would include selected representatives of water users associations, agriculture production commissioner, development commissioner besides the principal secretaries/secretaries of finance, revenue, agriculture, cooperation, water resources, Narmada Valley Development and Public Works Departments as members.

The command area development coordination committee proposed at each revenue division will be headed by the divisional commissioner.

It would include officers of the departments related to the command area development programme besides local MLAs, joint director agriculture, concerned district collector, district panchayat CEO, basin/project chief engineer, chairman project committee (Farmers organisation) and divisional officers of mandi and co-operative banks as members.

There would be eight project directors, basically the superintending engineers of water resources department shall be working under the eight chief engineers.

Of these, four posts of project directors have already been sanctioned for Tawa Ayacut- Bhopal, Bain Ganga Ayacut-Seoni, Gwalior Ayacut -Gwalior and Rani Avanti Bai Sagar Ayacut -Jabalpur.

The remaining four project directors and their staff of their offices would be set up by surrendering/reorganising the sanctioned posts in the departmental structure. They will have their headquarters at Rewa, Sagar, Indore and Datia. Each project director will have control over one divisional office and one sub-divisional office will be set up in each district.

The staff will be arranged by reorganising the divisions and sub-divisions of the water resources department, the release added.

UNI