Nagaland has 19,455 minor irrigation schemes

DIMAPUR — Nagaland has a total of 19,455 Minor Irrigation (MI) schemes comprising 0.2% (35) groundwater (GW) schemes and 99.8% (19,420) surface water (SW) schemes as per the 6th census of minor irrigation (MI) schemes with reference year 2017-18 released by the Ministry of Jal Shakti on August 26.

The report stated that there has been an increase to the tune of 13.7% in 6th MI census as compared to the 17,106 schemes in 5th MI census in the State of Nagaland. It added that the state government has reported a decline of 12.5% (5) in GW schemes and an increase of 13.8% (2,354) in SW schemes during 6th MI census as compared to the 40 GW schemes and 17,066 SW schemes recorded in 5th census.

Out of the 19,455 minor irrigation schemes reported in Nagaland, the report stated that 99.6% (19,374) were surface flow schemes.

And out of 19,455 MI schemes, 54.3% (10,563) were owned by a group of farmers, 44.2% (8,607) were owned by individual farmers and a small chunk of 1.5% (285) was public-owned.

As per the 6th census on minor irrigation schemes released by Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, there are 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes in the country, out of which 21.93 million (94.8%) were groundwater (GW) and 1.21 million (5.2%) were surface water (SW) schemes.

Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of MI schemes in the country followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Leading states in GW schemes were Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, while in SW schemes Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand have the highest share.

GW schemes comprise dug wells, shallow tube wells, medium tube wells and deep tube wells. The SW schemes comprise surface flow and surface lift schemes.

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