Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani announced filling 10 dams of the region with the Narmada waters through the network of canals under SAUNI Yojana – to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 30.
Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana is the dedicated water and irrigation scheme of Gujarat State.
Prime Minister will inaugurate the first phase of the SAUNI Yojana at Aji-3 dam . There are some regions, which are still dry even after rains in several parts of the state. Gujarat has started filling these dams with the Narmada water to provide water for irrigation.
Saurashtra region has total 138 schemes, of which 8 were completely filled as on August 20, while 57 schemes had live storage of 10 per cent or less of the gross capacity.
Aji-3 dam, from where the Prime Minister is set to inaugurate the SAUNI Yojana, has 52 per cent filling presently.
Of the total 138 dams in Saurashtra, 115 dams will be provided Narmada waters through the SAUNI Yojana, which was first announced by Modi himself during his tenure as the Gujarat Chief Minister.
Through this scheme, the excess overflowing flood water of Narmada is distributed to various reservoirs of eleven districts of Saurashtra through total 1126-km long four link pipelines thereby benefiting agriculture land area of about 10.22 lakh acres.
The first phase of SAUNI Yojana connects Machhu-II dam of Morbi district to 30 dams in Rajkot, Morbi, Jamnagar and Devbhoomi Dwarka districts. These dams will be filled with Narmada water covering 2.02 lakh acres of land area.
So far, Gujarat has received 57 per cent of its Long Period Average rainfall of 797 mm. Districts in Saurashtra like Surendranagar, Botad, Rajkot and Morbi continue to face rainfall deficit in the range of 68-72 per cent.
