E-Paper
Need for proper mgmt of water resources: Yogi
Addressing the concluding ceremony of the ‘Ground Water Week-2022’ organized in Lok Bhawan auditorium, the CM said Uttar Pradesh had fertile land and sufficient water resources. Along with ground water, surface water was also available in sufficient quantity in the state. There was need of proper management of the water resources
Lucknow: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Friday that more than 60 rivers had been revived in Uttar Pradesh during the past five years. Once these rivers might have been the backbone of agricultural production in various areas but due to negligence, their survival was endangered. The Jal Shakti and rural development departments launched the programme of the revival of the dying rivers with public participation and today these rivers were in full flow, he said.
Addressing the concluding ceremony of the ‘Ground Water Week-2022’ organized in Lok Bhawan auditorium, the CM said Uttar Pradesh had fertile land and sufficient water resources. Along with ground water, surface water was also available in sufficient quantity in the state. There was need of proper management of the water resources. The exploitation of ground water increased with the rise of population and industrialization. In the intervening period, the steps that should have been taken to conserve the groundwater were neglected. This had a huge impact on the ground water level of the state. Many development blocks of the state came under the category of overexploited and were marked as the dark zone. But today measures had been taken to revive the ground water level in the dark zones, he said.
The number of development blocks in the state that were critical had increased manifold in the past 17-18 years. Today the population of the state was about 25 crores. Naturally, more and more ground water had been used for drinking, irrigation and industrial production. The work of conservation of ground water was not done. The number of dark zones increased in the country and the state and along with salinity, the problem of arsenic and fluoride emerged as a challenge, he said.
On the direction of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, programmes like ‘Catch the Rain’ and ‘Amrit Sarovar’ had been launched across the country. The state government had promulgated laws to strengthen the system of rain water harvesting and launched a programme for water conservation.
Within the past 5 years, the campaigns had yielded positive results. “We have been successful in converting many development blocks from hypercritical to normal development blocks. The state government made an action plan for the management and conservation of ground water, due to which there was a drastic change in this situation. The people should participate in the water conservation drive,” Yogi said.
The country and the state were celebrating the Amrit Mahotsav programme on 75 years of independence. On the occasion, the Prime Minister had called for making 75-75 Amrit Sarovars in rural and urban areas of each district. The work on Amrit Sarovars was progressing fast in the state. The state government had made special arrangement for rain water harvesting, making it mandatory in construction of houses in urban areas.
On July 17, a special campaign of awareness for groundwater conservation was extended to 550 gram panchayats of 26 development blocks of 10 districts of the state. For this, digital ground water chariots were flagged off from Lucknow. These chariots were inspiring people to conserve every drop of water, he said.
