UMERKOTE: Once the fountainhead of prosperity, the Indravati river has long since turned into a reason of despair for people affected by the irrigation project in Nabarangpur district. Crying foul over alleged government neglect for years, now, much to their chagrin, the shifting of the office of chief engineer-cum-basin manager from Indravati to Bariniput in Koraput district has touched raw nerves.
Sources said, once the office and other related institutions get shifted, whatever little growth and development has come, will remain stalled. Further, the livelihood of people will also get affected. A team headed by Nabarangpur MLA Sadasiv Pradhani met the additional chief secretary, Water Resources, and BJD’s organising secretary Pranab Prakash Das at Bhubaneswar recently and handed over a memorandum objecting to the shifting of the project office to Bariniput. “The shifting of the project basin manager’s office and Quality Control Office will push the area into abyss,” said Pradhani.
Nabarangpur MP Ramesh Majhi had also written a letter to ACS of the Water Resources department in July last year and the department had assured that the Indravati project office will not be shifted. “But the assurances are forgotten which has hurt the sentiments of people in the region,” Majhi stated. In the letter, Majhi had also pressed to proceed with another irrigation project as the current one awaits approval of the Central Water Commission. It was launched by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in 2014.
The project is estimated at the cost of Rs 236 crore to supply water to lower catchment areas of Indravati reservoir through canals aimed at catering to around 26,000 ha of land in Tentulikhunti, Nandahandi, and Nabarangpur blocks. Later, the project cost was revised to Rs 618 crore in 2019, the MP said. But no progress has been made, rued the villagers.
While Rajya Sabha Member Muna Khan has also apprised the department on the repercussions of the project office shifting, Tentulikhunti ZP member Ratikant Panda, block vice-chairman Rajendra Bisoi, Poroja Barangpodor, Sarpanch Bandita Nayak, Samiti member Sudhir Khora, and Sukkant Mohanty and others requested the State government and Nabarangpur district administration to consider interests of the people in the area.