NEW DELHI: For the first time in the history of the country, the Ministry of Jal Shakti has conducted the first-ever census of water bodies across the nation.
The census provides a comprehensive inventory of India’s water resources, including natural and man-made water bodies like ponds, tanks, lakes, and more, and to collect data on the encroachment of water bodies.
The census also highlighted disparities between rural and urban areas and varying levels of encroachment and revealed crucial insights into the country’s water resources.
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The census was launched under the centrally sponsored scheme, ‘Irrigation Census’ in convergence with the 6th Minor Irrigation Census in order to have a comprehensive national database of all water bodies.
The information on all important aspects of the water bodies including their type, condition, status of encroachments, use, storage capacity, status of filling up of storage, etc was collected.
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It covered all the water bodies located in rural as well as urban areas that are in-use or not in-use.
The census also took into account all type of uses of water bodies like irrigation, industry, pisciculture, domestic/ drinking, recreation, religious, ground water recharge etc.
Census has been successfully completed and the all India and state-wise reports have been published.
Ministry of Jal Shakti is the nodal ministry responsible for laying down policy guidelines and programmes for the development, conservation and management of water as a national resource.
The finalization of results and completion of this report has been made possible by the strenuous efforts of all the officers and staff of Minor Irrigation (Stat) Wing of the Ministry of Jal Shakti under the supervision and support of Secretary, Department of Water Resources, RD & GR, Ministry of Jal Shakti, as well as dedicated technical support provided by National Informatics Centre and determined efforts made by the State/UT Governments.
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The IEC Division of the Ministry is ensuring dissemination of the Census report across the nation and especially for planners, research scholars, agricultural and water scientists, policy makers, administrators and all other stakeholders in this sector.
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