MUMBAI: The Maharashtra cabinet on Tuesday adopted a new policy for de-silting of dams and spreading the silt in farms for farmers’ benefit. According to the newly adopted policy, 31,459 out of 82,156 dams in the State would be de-silted and farmers would be allowed to carry the silt to their farms free of cost.
“This would restore the storage capacity of the dams and help the farmers enrich soil in their farms,” a senior COM official told the New Indian Express.
According to government estimates, storage capacity of the 31,459 dams that are to be de-silted is 42.54 lakh TMC, of which 5.18 lakh TMC is expected to be the quantity of silt. Complete de-silting is expected to take around four years and cost around Rs 6,236 crore, the official said.
Under the new policy, the State government has decided to waive off royalty for the silt. “Funds for de-silting would be made available under CSR schemes. All the projects under this policy will undergo a third party assessment to ensure transparency. Data would be preserved digitally along with geo tags etc. to ensure that the policy is not misused for illegal sand mining,” the officer said.