Tribal farmers of water abundant district Mandla, surrounded with mighty Narmada river and its tributaries from three sides, are deprived of water for irrigating their farms. Thousands of tribal families, who were displaced during construction of Bargi Dam, are unable to access its water for irrigating their farms.

The district has majority of the catchment area of Bargi Dam which irrigates around 4.5 lakh hectare farmland on downstream of Narmada river. Around 50,000 to 60,000 hectares of above 1.68 hectare land of Rabi crops mainly in Bijadandi and Narayanganj development blocks have no water for irrigation. Irrigation of around 27,500 hectare farms is carried out through different sources but farmers in majority of the villages have failed in irrigating their farms.

Ironically, the Central and State Governments are giving special impetus on upliftment of tribal people and facilitating agriculture sector but tribal dominating agricultural district Mandla is deprived of lift irrigation project.

The newly-appointed Collector Dr Saloni Sidana, when contacted by ‘The Hitavada’, informed that she has recently assumed charge and is unaware of the issue. She said she would be looking into the matter for solving irrigation problem in the district.

Convenor of Bargi Bandh Visthapit and Prabhavit Sangh, Rajkumar Sinha informed that Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) is materialising total 26 lift irrigation projects of around Rs 38,000 crores on downstream of Narmada river for irrigating 12 lakh hectare land in 3,000 villages but the Government has failed in establishing even a small lift irrigation project in the tribal district. According to official sources in NVDA, Bargi Water Reservoir has total capacity of 3,180 million cubic metre which is being completely utilised with irrigating 1.57 lakh hectare through left bank canal and 2.45 lakh hectares through right bank canal and rest water is supplied to Jabalpur Municipal Corporation, Cantonment Board Jabalpur, Power Generation and other uses. There is an urgent need of implementing lift irrigation in Mandla for stopping migration of tribal population and desired economic development of tribal dominating district.