Kutch canal patch stops Narmada in its tracks

Hours after successfully taking the waters of Narmada to Modh Kuva, the village at the tail-end of the Kutch Branch Canal (KBC), the authorities had to stop the flow after a patch in the path breached on Thursday.

“We were conducting trials for the last week, and for the first time the waters reached Modh Kuva late on Wednesday night. The 750 kms flow from the Sardar Sarovar dam site is the longest in the country for a man-made canal. In one part, the canal developed a breach, and we plan to repair it and restart the trials in the next 2-3 days. The trial aimed to look out for any issues and address them immediately,” J P Gupta, chairman of Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (SSNNL) said.

KBC is part of the ambitious Sardar Sarovar project, hailed as the country’s largest irrigation project with more than 60,000 kms of the canal network. Gupta said that preliminary investigation showed that the place where the pipeline was damaged had some issues in the joint area with some private pipelines running beneath. Whether it was a technical issue or some reason, we will find out after investigation, he said.

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The ₹6,493 crore KBC project aims to bring 1,02,200 hectares of land under irrigation and provide drinking water to 906 villages in the semi-arid region of Kutch, the country’s largest district. Of the seven branch canals, six have already been completed and commissioned, providing water to North Gujarat and Saurashtra regions. The work for more than 200 kms on Kutch Branch Canal was completed about four years ago, and the remaining stretch was stuck due to issues related to land acquisition, said people familiar with the development.

The waters reached Modh Kuva around 1 am on Thursday, four hours before the breach was found at Bidada village, about 315 kms from the offtake point, said sources close to the development.

“The patch that got damaged on Thursday was completed in 2016. The breach was 10 meters deep,” said an official in the know of the matter.

As the Narmada waters began flowing the villages of Kutch the villagers cheered, lit the sky with fireworks in celebration and praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the completing the project.

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SSP is an inter-state project with a terminal dam on the Narmada river at Kevadia in Gujarat. A multi-purpose project with irrigation, power and drinking water benefits, it is meant to benefit Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. SSNNL is implementing the SSP project.

In September 2017, seventy-one years after it was conceived, a completed Sardar Sarovar Dam—one of the biggest in the country—was dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.