Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday inaugurated and laid foundation stone for several irrigation projects worth more than Rs 3,000 crore.
The chief minister inaugurated 6 projects worth Rs 131 crore in 4 districts and laid stone for 46 projects in 15 districts to be executed with an estimated cost of Rs 2,906 crore. The total cost of the projects is Rs 3,037 crore.
The major projects that were inaugurated included Kusumi barrage, constructed with a cost of Rs 70.88 crore in Nayagarh. Naveen also laid foundation stone for laying undergound pipes for irrigation at a cost of Rs 148.17 crore.
The barrage will irrigate 9,254 acre of land for the benefit of 1.5 lakh peo0ple of 49 villages under 3 blocks of the district. Besides, 5 minor irrigation projects will be supplied with irrigation water from the barrage.
Similarly, foundation stone was laid for Hadu dam with a cost of Rs 265.24 crore and its undergound pipelines with Rs 195.89 crore in Cuttack district. The proje4ct will irrigate 8,997 acre in 86 villages. It is also targeted to provide drinking water to 293 villages and produce electricity of 1 mw.
Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister said he has always been giving priority to agriculture and farmers’ welfare. “I have been meeting the farmers in Bhubaneswar regularly to understand their problems. In order to solve their issues, the state government has come up with several welfare schemes,” he said.
The major schemes for the farmers included interest-free loan upto Rs 1 lakh, free crop insurance, KALIA scholarship for children of the farmers. Besides, the government has reached out to the farmers through its Ama Odisha Nabin Odisha, BSKY, LAccMI schemes for the rural population, he added.
Ministers Tukuni Sahu and Jagannath Saraka, MLAs Debi Prasad Mishra, Arun Kumar Sahu, Kishore Chandra Nayak, Saroj Kumar Meher and Ramesh Chandr5a Majhi also spoke in the programme which was coordinated by 5T chairman VK Pandian.
