Work has started for the six-phase flood control project to address Vadodara’s flood issues due to Vishwamitri river, said Minister Kunvarji Bavaliya while presenting the demands of the State Water Resources and Water Supply Department in the state Assembly on Monday. “Recently, due to heavy rains in Vadodara city and its surrounding areas, Vadodara city had to face flood situation. Looking at this, works worth an estimated Rs 2,750 crore have been started in six phases to carry out phased work of flood control implementation for Vishwamitri river flooding,” the Minister said as he presented the budgetary demands for 2025-26 totalling Rs 17,364.16 crore. Almost 9.4 inches (239 mm) of rain in 24 hours on August 26 and 27 last year caused the 134-year-old Ajwa and the 94-year-old Pratappura reservoirs to overflow and flood the Vishwamitri river. Vadodara went under water for nearly 72 hours. Under a budget allocation of Rs 17,364.16 crore for 2025-26, Bavaliya said Rs 813 crore has been provided for Sauni Yojana, Rs 1,334 crore for Sujalam Suflam Pipeline Project and Rs 1,400 crore for Kutch Project, and that plans are being taken forward to divert the water of Narmada flowing into the sea to the dry regions of North Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. Presenting details of irrigation by area, the minister said that out of the three phases of the SAUNI scheme to connect 115 reservoirs of Saurashtra with the additional one million acre feet of Narmada water in Saurashtra region, Phase-1 and Phase-2 have been completed and the work of Phase-3 is nearing completion. With the completion of this work, irrigation facilities will be strengthened in an area of 8,25,000 acres and the problem of drinking water in Saurashtra will be addressed, he added. “A provision of Rs 85 crore has been made for the work of preventing salt intrusion in the Saurashtra region. Further, it has been planned to build 100 check dams worth over Rs 131 crore through which an area of around 3,900 hectares will benefit from direct and indirect irrigation and four new weirs worth approximately Rs 103 crore have been planned to be built. This will benefit nearly 15,000 hectares of 19 villages along with storage of 100 MCFT water. In addition, a provision of Rs 170 crore has been made for cleaning and widening of rivers and canals for the Ghed area, which has been affected by the problem of floods for years, and for strengthening the embankments of rivers and canals and flood drainage work as well as cleaning the rivers,” he added. The Ghed area refers to the coastal cup-shaped region of Saurashtra, primarily in Junagadh and Porbandar districts. Bavaliya said, “500 gram panchayats in the state have completed the work of water audit. Similarly, the water supply system has completed the water audit of 2,000 headworks and water distribution points under a total of 363 group schemes. Gujarat has become the first state in the country to bring awareness of water audit on such a large scale.” Regarding the water storage work in North Gujarat, the minister said that for the villages of Tharad, Dhanera, Deesa, Deodar, Lakhni and Kankrej talukas of Banaskantha district of North Gujarat that are deprived of the benefits of Narmada water, a provision of Rs 665 crore has been made in this year's budget for the work of two new pipeline projects worth a total of Rs 2,213 crore. Through these projects, more than 32,000 hectares of land will be directly and indirectly benefited by irrigation. The state government has undertaken a major project of water storage and groundwater recharge by constructing a total of 14 barrages under the series of barrages on Sabarmati river — out of which, the work of five barrages has been completed, he added. The Minister added that a provision of Rs 250 crore has been made for the protection and riverfront development of Sabarmati near Gandhinagar GIFT City, estimated at Rs 636 crore. Regarding the irrigation facilities available in the tribal areas, the Minister said that 18 major surface irrigation projects have been planned to be undertaken at a cost of Rs 5,436 crore. Out of these, work of nine projects has been completed while that of other nine is under progress. “Six districts of Gujarat have been included in the Central Government's 'Atal Bhujal Yojana' for areas where the groundwater level has come down a lot and the rate of water withdrawal is much higher than the recharge of groundwater. Apart from Kutch, 1873 gram panchayats in 36 talukas of Gandhinagar, Mehsana, Sabarkantha, Banaskantha and Patan have been included in this scheme,” the Minister said. The Minister said that a lot of work has been done in the drinking water sector for the last 23 years. “A statewide water supply grid has been constructed in the water supply sector at a cost of over Rs 20,000 crore, through which 3,250 km of bulk pipeline has been constructed. This water supply grid has connected 15,687 out of 18,152 villages and 251 cities of the state to Narmada and other surface sources, through which 3,200 million litres of water is being supplied daily to 4.36 crore people through 1,432 heads and sub-headworks under 372 group schemes in the entire state. This year, the works of 23 group schemes have been completed that include 804 villages,” he listed. Giving details of various schemes approved for 2025-26, Bavaliya said that Rs 2,239.08 crore under Jal Jeevan Mission, Rs 1,911.90 crore for rural water supply scheme, Rs 950 crore for Narmada Canal-based water supply scheme, and Rs 500 crore for establishment of desalination plant has been provided.
