Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda has made a demand of Rs 10,000crore from the Centre to tackle the alarming water crisis in the entire state both for irrigation and drinking purposes.He said that Centre should either come forward with the package of Rs 10,000 crore as one time special grant to complete as many as 19ongoing irrigation projects which intended to benefit more to other states than Jharkhand or to persuade the central agencies to take upthe residual work.
Referring 19 irrigation projects, both of medium and major scales,chief minister reminded that the recurring water crisis in absence ofrequired rainfall could have been resolved to a great extent in manydistricts had the projects on the rivers like Swaranarekha, Damodar, Kanhar, Ajay, Mayrakshi, etc, been completed as per schedule.
Munda said that besides fund crunch, these projects had been sufferedin the name of forest clearance and lack of interest of the concernedstates in handing over land for the projects falling in their jurisdiction..
The chief minister strongly pleaded for a national status to Swaranarekha Multipurpose Project (SMP) which would benefit stateslike Bengal and Orissa more than Jharkhand.