BALANGIR: The Lower Suktel Mega Irrigation project has received fresh momentum with renewed push from the State government. The focus to resolve the demands of affected people offers hope for construction work of the project to resume soon.Sixty-five per cent earth work of the project has been completed while construction of the spillway is stuck at 45 per cent. Currently, work on approach road from Magurbeda to the project site is underway.
Special project director of Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) Mahendra Mohapatra says the State government is serious about completing the irrigation project. A decision on demands of people affected by the project will be taken soon, he says. It would be followed by recruitment of staff and resumption of construction work.
The project has had a long history of resistance. After the first survey was conducted way back in 1979, it went into the backburner for about a decade only to be revived in the 1990s. Environment clearance was given to the project in 1998. In 2001, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik laid its foundation stone but it went on to be a stop-start mode with protests from villagers who are affected by it.
The project site is located around 20 km from Balangir town. The proposed dam will submerge about 30 villages, displacing over 14,000 people. Construction work of the project started in April 2013 only to be stopped in August after affected villagers under the banner of ‘Lower Suktel Budi Anchal Sangram Parishad’ staged protest outside the Odisha Legislative Assembly demanding the project to be scrapped. Despite local opposition, work resumed in January the following year but was once again halted in July, 2018.
Initially, inhabitants of 14 affected villages received compensation amount as per the R&R Act, 2006. However, they are now demanding compensation as per the amended Act of 2013.In face of resistance, the project has received support from a section of people under the aegis of Balangir Action Committee which is pressuring the government to construct the dam at the earliest.
The project will come up over Suktel river, a tributary of Tel which is a major right tributary of Mahanadi. It proposes to irrigate 31,830 hectares (ha) in Balangir and Sonepur districts and submerge 4,602 ha including 583 ha of forests. Besides, the project will supply 20 cusecs of drinking water to Balangir town.
Being implemented with Central loan assistance from Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP), the project’s original plan was `217.13 crore which was revised to `1041.09 crore due to the inordinate delay.
Lower Suktel project includes construction of a 1,155 metre long and 30 metre high earthen dam with a spillway having length of 255 metre. There are two main canals - one coming out of the right dyke with a length of 23.84 km while the other from the earthen dam is 10.76 km long. The left canal includes two distributaries of around 35 km long, Chief Construction Engineer Niranjan Rout said.