Chandigarh: Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has directed the officers to prepare district wise comprehensive plans to fill up all the dry ponds in the rural areas of the region by channelising the rainwater to use for irrigation and other purposes. He has also directed to constitute district and sub-division level contingency teams to immediately deal with water logging problems across the state.
Khattar, presiding over a meeting of rural development, public health engineering and irrigation departments, said that maximum water goes waste during the rainy season which should be tapped, and therefore, a comprehensive plan needs to be prepared to fill up all dry ponds in the rural areas, and later used for irrigation and cattle consumption. He also said that there were about 1,583 dry ponds in the state of which 309 were filled up during the previous rainy season. He also directed the officers to conduct a survey for identifying such areas where there is no need of ponds in both rural and urban areas. He directed the officers to make a provision for utilization of about 1,000 overflowing ponds of clean water. “The water of these ponds could be dedicatedly utilized for irrigating the nearby fields either by laying pipelines or through water courses,” he said.
He also directed for the purification of contaminated water of ponds in both urban and rural areas. He was informed that the rural development and panchayats department has initiated 1,400 project of five-pond system in the state and its positive result would soon be visible.
