New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday announced assistance worth Rs 5,300 crore for the Upper Bhadra Irrigation Project in Karnataka. The project, which aims to ensure irrigation in more than two lakh hectares of area in the central Karnataka districts of Tumakuru, Davangere, Chitradurga, and Chikkamagaluru by supplying water from the Bhadra river, envisages lifting - in the first phase - 17.40 thousand million cubic feet (TMC feet) of water from Tunga to Bhadra.
In the second stage, it aims to lift "29.90 TMC of water from Bhadra to Tunnel near Ajjampura, in Tungabhadra sub-basin of Krishna basin", project documents, as per reports, noted. Reacting to the allocation, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Boammi tweeted, thanking Sitharaman on behalf of the state. "On behalf of whole of Karnataka I thank the Finance Minister @nsitharaman and the union government led by Prime Minister Mr @narendramodi for announcing a grant of Rs 5,300 crore for the state's flagship Upper Bhadra project in this year's union budget." he said.
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Notably, Bommai had previously made repeated requests to the Centre to declare the Upper Bhadra project a 'national project' as he believed it will help the state "get a central grant of Rs 16,000 crore". The state government has accorded administrative approval to the re-revised Detailed Project Report (DPR) at a cost of Rs 21,473.67 crore.
As per the project plan, the primary objective of the project is to provide a sustainable irrigation facility in the Khariff season, the other being re-charging the groundwater table and providing drinking water by filling up 367 tanks to their 50 percent capacity in drought-prone taluks of the said districts.
He had also met Sitharaman, a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, multiple times and requested her to allocate funds for the project. The central regions of Karnataka often face drought situations despite the presence of two perennial rivers Tunga and Bhadravathi, which become Tungabhadra after their convergence, and will get a respite with the implementation of the project, officials added. The move is seen as crucial for Karnataka, which will go to polls before May, 2023.
