After many hiccups, UTP on road to completion

haveri: the upper tunga project (utp), an irrigation project was proposed in 1975 and the karnataka government gave the nod on october 3, 1991. three chief ministers later, (s bangarappa, veerappa moily and j h patel), that is till 2000, only foundation stones had been laid for the project by resepctive governments who wanted to hog credit for the scheme. in the meantime, 11 chief engineers retired after submitting voluminous reports to the government. the last 25 years have seen progress this far, no further. in contrast, the tempo has picked up under the congress government. chief minister s.m.krishna and the water resources minister h k patil have set a deadline for the project and work is on at a frenetic pace. irrigation works in this part of north karnataka have always been neglected. compared to the volume of development work in the cauvery basin in old mysore area, work on the krishna basin in north karnataka is nothing. the gajanur dam across tunga river in shimoga district has been irrigating 21,000 acres since the past five decades. the utp, which covers 2,34,000 acres of land in three districts will on completion benefit hirekerur (27,310 acres), ranebennur (1,07,200 acres), haveri (74,200 acres) and hanagal (14,030 acres) taluks in haveri district, honnali and harihar taluks in davangere districts (15,390 acres) and shimoga district (5250 acres). there was a proposal to raise the height of the existing dam (built in 1956) from 584.06m to 588.24m, so that an additional 12.24 tmcft of water could be stored. when approved (in 1991), the cost of the project was pegged at rs.271.41 crore. later, it was revised to rs.379.49 crore. experts proposed a new dam downstream of the existing dam and costs were revised in 1998-99 to rs 877.55 crore. the government gave administrative approval on february 2, 1999 to build a new dam at the cost of rs.92 crore. now the dam is nearing completion. from 1991-99, the release of funds was a trickle and priorities all wrong, as only surveys were undertaken for a decade and spacious buildings constructed in the name of utp in gajanur, shimoga, honnali, rattihalli, ranebennur and haveri. an interesting aspect about the project is that only 427.5 hectares will be submerged. by re-inviting tenders and revising construction rates of the main alignment canal by the present government, it resulted in savings to the tune of rs.10 crore, the minister said. minister h k patil has been visiting the project area frequently and reviewing progress. according to him, by 2003, the beneficiaries will use the water to irrigate 2,34,000 acres of land.