Anantnag: A lift-irrigation scheme that could have been a solution for the irrigation woes of more than 500 hectares of agricultural land here in Pulwama district remains incomplete ten years after it was sanctioned.
The Rabitar Lift-Irrigation Scheme was sanctioned under the central government’s Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Program (AIBP) in 2012. With a lift of 100 meters, the scheme was to be constructed on Parigam Canal, with an expected cost of about Rs 4 crore.
“The scheme has the potential of irrigating more than 500 hectares of agricultural land, across the Rabitar Karewa, here in Pulwama,” an official in the Irrigation and Flood Control Department told Kashmir Reader.
The work on the scheme, however, has remained on a halt for the last more than three years now, in wake of a lack of compensation to the landowners, and some major escalation of costs.
“The work done is not much on the project. The cost escalation has emerged as a major challenge for the completion of the scheme,” the official from the department told Kashmir Reader.
Some machinery has been procured already but is lying defunct as work on the project remains derailed. “What use is the machinery when the scheme is nowhere near functional,” the official remarked.
Locals that Kashmir Reader talked to said they had high hopes pinned on the scheme but had not expected such official apathy. “In the present scenario, when water is scarce for irrigation, this scheme would have meant an end to our woes,” the locals said.
There has been a serious shortage of water in wake of dry weather this year.
Kashmir Reader talked to a senior official from the Flood and Irrigation department who said that some landowners in the area wanted compensation for the use of their land and that first led to the work being halted.
“When the scheme was sanctioned, no provision was kept for land compensation,” the official said, adding that the scheme, for now, remains abandoned. “A fresh DPR needs to be formulated if the landowners are to be compensated,” he said, adding that the cost-escalation also needs to be kept into consideration. “We took up the matter with the concerned officials of the department but there has been no response. Consider the scheme abandoned for now,” he said.

Suhail A Shah