Kendrapara: Even as two years have passed since the commissioning of the much-awaited Mahanadi-Chitrotpala Island Irrigation Project (MCIIP), water is yet to be seen in the canals. Farmers in the area, who had taken a sigh of relief and then hoped that their days of hardships would come to an end, are back to square one. Two years down the road, they have rain as their sole source of irrigation for their farmlands. The ambitious project was dedicated to the public May 18 2022 during a ceremony held at Kalaboda under Garadpur block of Kendrapara district in the presence of then minister of Water Resources Raghunandan Das and former Patkura MLA Savitri Agarwal. The minister had then promised the local cultivators that the canal would help them irrigate their farmlands in kharif season, garnering much appreciation.
In this regard, farmer leader Bidhu Bhushan Mohapatra, local intelligentsia Ganesh Chandra Samal, farmers Ranjan Rout, Subash Rout, Ambika Kanungo, and Sushil Sahu said water has been released in all the canals of the coastal district starting July 15 this year for kharif farming. However, no water has been supplied through this canal for last two years. This has forced the local farmers to be at the mercy of rain. Out of total 15,342 hectare of agricultural land to benefit from this project, 8,937 hectares in the Nishchintakoili block of Cuttack district and Tirtol block of Jagatsinghpur district have been irrigated through canals by 2004, they said. However, for the rest 6,404 hectares of agricultural land in the area, rain is the only hope.
A detailed project report (DPR) had been prepared to dig up 45 minor and sub-minor canals measuring about 50 km from this canal on the right side of 12-km-long Chitrotpala river and 10-km-long Paika River. It was estimated that the remaining 6,404 hectare of farmland in Garadpur and Marshaghai blocks of Kendrapara district could be irrigated from the kharif season two years back. Even as canal digging was halfway through, the minister’s hasty inauguration and the declaration of immediate kharif water supply during the ceremony had created a buzz in the locality then.
With irrigation yet to begin through the canals, people are wondering what could have been the reason behind the minister’s hasty opening of the project. Notably, with an ambitious goal of irrigating 19,542 hectare agricultural land in the MahanadiChitrotpala delta region, the state government had started the Mahanadi-Chitrotpala Island Irrigation Project 23 years ago for the benefit of farmers in more than 300 villages under Garadpur, Marshaghai and Mahakalapara blocks of Kendrapara and Tirtol block of Jagatsinghpur district. The estimated cost of the project was only Rs 39.94 crore in 1989. The project was taken up in 1995 with World Bank funding to provide irrigation potential to 15,342 hectares of agricultural land in Kendrapara, Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur districts. However, it increased to Rs 395.46 crore in 2012. As per the popular demand, the construction work of the project resumed again in 2016-17 FY with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
However, digging of the main canal to Yadupur on the left side of Paika River has stopped near Batira. Similarly, work on the main canal on the right side of the Chitrotpala River, which is supposed to go up to Garjanga, has been halted near Naindipur before the inauguration. When asked in this regard, Umesh Kumar Sethi, inspector of the Water Resources department, said the process to release water in all the canals of the district is underway.