by Anup Biswas

 Haflong :  Dr. J. B. Ekka, IAS, Principal Secretary, Panchayat and Rural Development, Assam held a meeting at Haflong circuit house on Monday with the team of officers of line department in presence of Asst Secretaries, Govt of India, Pallavi Sarkar and Dibakar Nath who have been assigned Dima Hasao for the Jal Shakti Abhiyan.

Nandita Gorlosa, Executive Member, North Cachar Hills Autnomous Council (NCHAC) attended the meeting on behalf of Chief Executive member, NCHAC and actively participated to give practical inputs to the plan of execution of Jal Shakti Abhiyan in this district.

Principal Secretary, NCHAC, R K Majumdar along with council Secretaries L Z Nampui who is also project director, Dist. Rural Development Authority (DRDA) of Dima Hasao and T T Daulagupu incharge of Planning Branch gave their suggestions during the meeting.

Deputy Commissioner Amitabh Rajkhowa also gave an overview of the status of water availability in Dima Hasao and crisis faced in headquarter Haflong.

A time-bound, mission-mode water conservation campaign under the banner of Jal Shakti Abhiyan was initiated by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi recently. Under this campaign officers from various line departments, groundwater experts and scientists from the Government of India will work together with state and district officials in India’s most water-stressed districts for water conservation and water resource management by focusing on accelerated implementation of five target intervention.

Dima Hasao has been identified by the government as one such water stressed district in Assam. For this, the campaign will run through by the team seeking help from the local farmers of that area. As the rain pattern and water availability throughout different areas vary depending on their topography.

For this campaign citizen participation has been encouraged by the government along with all the line departments such as Forest dept, PHE, DRDA, Water Resource, Irrigation, Agriulture, Fisheries, Soil conservation etc to work in coordination as a team to improve water use efficiency.

It is expected that Jal Shakti Abhiyan should bring positive change in people for water conservation by focusing on water conservation and rainwater harvesting, renovation of traditional and other water bodies/tanks, reuse and recharge structures, watershed development, intensive afforestation.