Jalyukt Shivar plant sifting to take 6 months: Maha Minister

Aurangabad: The classification of complaints related to the Jalyukt Shivar project would take at least six months and only then can it be decided which of these would be probed, said Maharashtra minister Shankarrao Gadakh on Monday. The Uddhav Thackeray government had recently ordered an probe into the Jalyukt Shivar project, a flagship scheme of the previous Devendra Fadnavis government aimed at increasing water storage for irrigation, after reports of irregularities came up.

"There are are over six lakh works that were taken up under the Jalyukt Shivar project. Funds of Rs 9,500 crore were spent. Classification of complaints will be done by a committee in six months, and some of them will be probed," Gadakh, the state's Soil and Water Conservation minister, said.

He also said his department was facing a cash crunch due to the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown and 40 per cent of the Rs 2,800 crore sanctioned in the budget had arrived.


He said the state government will spend Rs 140-150 crore to revive the Water and Land Management Institute (WALMI) here.