CAG report slams states for ‘failed’ irrigation scheme

After spending over Rs 26,000 crore in the last 15 years, India’s flagship irrigation programme has covered only half of the area envisaged, a report of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found.

Updated on: May 9, 2010, 24:18:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After spending over Rs 26,000 crore in the last 15 years, India’s flagship irrigation programme has covered only half of the area envisaged, a report of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found.

The Central government in 1996-97 launched the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) aimed at improving agricultural output by extending irrigation facilities to areas where it was non-existent.

“Against the targeted potential of 9.65 million hectares...only 4.90 million hectares was created,” said the CAG report tabled in Parliament this week.

In many projects, the report found, no irrigation facilities were created as the money was spent on existing ones.

Gujarat was given Rs 675 crore to build canals for drought-prone areas but the entire money was spent on existing or under-construction projects.

The CAG also said that 11 of the 28 major irrigation projects sanctioned between 2003-08 by the Planning Commission were done so without proper investigation and survey reports. Detailed reports of 17 projects were found without data on annual rainfall and soil survey as well as incomplete meteorological data.

Though on record 100 of the 253 irrigation projects sanctioned were shown to be complete, the CAG found 12 were incomplete or hadn’t been commissioned.

It also said that six states — Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa — cornered 75 to 85 per cent of the grants without corresponding performance

The audit scrutiny also revealed that undue benefit to contractors worth Rs 186 crore in 14 states was provided.

The CAG has also pulled up the Water Resources Ministry, which implements the scheme, for not taking action against states that failed to perform. There is a provision in AIBP guidelines that a grant can be converted into a loan if the project is not completed in time. That was not done in any of the cases.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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