Mumbai: In another major reversal of a decision taken by the previous BJP regime, the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government in Maharashtra on Wednesday restored the supply of water from the left bank canal of the Nira Deoghar dam to Baramati, the pocketborough of NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
The state Cabinet under Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray decided to equally distribute water from the left and the right bank canals of the Nira Deoghar dam to the command areas, an official release said.
As per the decision, 55 per cent water will be released in the left bank canal which will benefit Purander, Baramati and Indapur talukas while the right bank canal will get 45 per cent water which will be utilised for Pandharpur, Sangola,Khandala,Phaltan, and Malshiras talukas.
The water will be made available for the purpose of drinking, industrial use and agriculture.
Last June, the Fadnavis government had cleared a proposal to cut off the supply of "unused" water from the Nira Deoghar dam to parts of Baramati, Indapur and Purandar in Pune district, arguing that these areas were located outside the notified command area of the dam. fadnavis government also decided to move the entire excess supply, through lift irrigation, to the right bank, which had triggered a political clash between NCP and BJP.
While the dam had been constructed in 2007 itself and has a total capacity of 11.73 TMC (thousand million cubic feet), the distribution canal system work is yet to be completed. Contending that the surplus water in the dam would remain unutilised in the command area till the distribution network was in place, the Congress-NCP government in 2007 had first decided to divert the unused water to left and right bank of an existing canal system developed for two other dams over the Nira reservoir for five years. It was later extended for another five years. The left bank of the canal carried the water to parts of Baramati, Indapur and Purandar, while the right bank catered to tehsils in Solapur and Satara.
