Center has not disbursed any funds for rehabilitation, refurbishment and restoration of water bodies in Telangana
UPDATE – 11:00 PM, Sunday – Dec 11 22
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Hyderabad: According to the 2018-19 figures placed in the Lok Sabha earlier this week, the center has not provided any funding for the rehabilitation, renovation and restoration of Telangana water bodies in the past four financial years.
Interestingly, the Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti Bishweswar Tudu, even while giving this information at home, appreciated the remarkable work done by Telangana in water conservation and harvesting under its flagship program Mission Kakatiya.
According to information provided by the Lok Sabha, central assistance of Rs 4,983 crore was provided to 11 states between 2014-15 and 2022-23. Among them, Odisha and Telangana completed the largest number of renovation projects of 810 and 437 water bodies respectively.
However, over the past eight years, the Center has approved Rs 4,796 crore to Odisha while Telangana has been approved to Rs 1,547 crore.
Since 2018-19, no funds have been disbursed to Telangana, which shows pure discrimination. However, the Center allocated Rs 178.7 crore to Bihar where only 59 water bodies were refurbished and Rs 330 crore to Madhya Pradesh where 124 water bodies were refurbished.
Unsurprisingly, the Jal Shakti Ministry has already completed the transformation of more water bodies in BJP-ruled countries and other countries ruled by friendly parties under the Jal Shakti Abhiyan plan, which was inspired by Telangana’s Mission Kakatiya.
As of December 6 in the current financial year, Jal Shakti Ministry completed the upgrading of 20,357 water bodies in Uttar Pradesh, 15,189 in Andhra Pradesh, 12,185 in Karnataka, 9,825 in Odisha, Tamil Nadu 9,014, Chhattisgarh 7,849 etc. Only 3,414 water bodies have been rehabilitated in Telangana.
However, in response to a question, Bishweswar Tudu was full of praise for Mission Kakatiya. He pointed out that several states have done notable work in the area of water conservation/harvesting such as “Mission Kakatiya” in Telangana, “Mukhyamantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyan” in Rajasthan, “Jalyukt Shibar”, “Sujalam Sufalam Abhiyan” in Gujarat, “Neeru Chettu” in Andhra Pradesh, “Jal Jeevan Hariyali” in Bihar, “Jal Hi Jeevan” in Haryana and “Neeru Chettu” in Tamil Nadu Kudimaramath” program and more. By the way, most of these plans were inspired by Mission Kakatiya.
