NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday will launch the ‘Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain’ campaign on World Water Day, which is celebrated on March 22.
The Prime Minister will launch the campaign at 12:30 pm today through video conferencing. According to a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the campaign will be undertaken across the country, in both rural and urban areas, with the theme “catch the rain, where it falls, when it falls”. “The campaign will be implemented from March 22 to November 30 November – the pre-monsoon and monsoon period in the country. It will be launched as a Jan Andolan to take water conservation at the grass-root level through people’s participation.
It is intended to nudge all stakeholders to create rainwater harvesting structures suitable to the climatic conditions and subsoil strata, to ensure proper storage of rainwater,” the statement said. Other than the launching of the campaign, Prime Minister Modi will witness the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) between the Union Minister of Jal Shakti and the Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh to implement the Ken Betwa Link Project, the first project of the National Perspective Plan for interlinking of rivers. “The agreement heralds the beginning of inter-state cooperation to implement the vision of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to carry water from areas that have surplus water to drought-prone and water deficit areas, through the interlinking of rivers.
This project involves the transfer of water from the Ken to the Betwa River through the construction of Daudhan Dam and a canal linking the two rivers, the Lower Orr Project, Kotha Barrage and Bina Complex Multipurpose Project,” the statement said. The project will be of immense benefit to the water-starved region of Bundelkhand, especially to the districts of Panna, Tikamgarh, Chhatarpur, Sagar, Damoh, Datia, Vidisha, Shivpuri and Raisen of Madhya Pradesh and Banda, Mahoba, Jhansi and Lalitpur of Uttar Pradesh.
It will pave the way for more interlinking of river projects to ensure that scarcity of water does not become an inhibitor for development in the country, it added.
