Click to play videoMumbai: It was a dream for Janardhan Mhatre, a farmer from Maharashtra's Raigad district, to plough his fields with water from the nearby Hetawne dam. But 28 years on, it is still a dream.
“It's more than 27 years since the dam construction began, but till date we haven't got water neither for irrigation nor for drinking,” Mhatre said.
Farmers of 22 villages of Raigad's Penn Taluka have been waiting for the Hetawne dam, which has been under construction for the last 25 years.
What is even more shocking is that there over 1,000 such incomplete dams across Maharashtra.
Information acquired through the RTI Act by activist Chetan Kothari and CNN-IBN reveals that there are at least 1,300 dam projects pending in Maharashtra. It also includes 11 projects marked 'extremely important' and their costs a whopping Rs 47,603 crore.
Another fallout of these languishing projects is something which even the state government accepts. Chief Minister of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh said, “Power shortage has been a problem and we are working on it.
But the farmers are furious. An angry farmer in Raigad, Gyaandev Mhatre, said, “In the coming Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls we will teach this government a lesson.”
So with elections nearing, the incomplete dams could just end up being the government's biggest trouble.
(With inputs from Prachi Jatania)
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