Manipur Dam Project Takes 29 Years to Complete

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Manipur has created yet another record apart from having remained cut off for 68 days. This one, however, is a positive one — a multipurpose dam project, the foundation stone for which was laid by Manmohan Singh, the then Member-Secretary of the Planning Commission way back in 1981, has been finally completed.

About 76 km south of the state capital, the Khuga multipurpose project near here, which Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh describes as one of the state’s “most prestigious” projects, in fact not only took a little less than three decades to complete, its cost has also shot up by more than 2,500 per cent.

“It is a fact that the cost has shot up over the years. But the biggest thing is that it has been completed after it remained almost neglected for so long,” said state Flood Control and Irrigation Minister N Biren, who took special interest to ensure that the project was completed. It was actually in the past three to four years that the project work was actually speeded up.

The project, built on the Khuga river in Churachandpur district, has already started supplying water to about 8,000 hectares, while five million gallons of drinking water is being supplied to the residents of Churachandpur town 10 km away from the site.

“The government is yet to formally declare the project as completed. We are looking for a date from none other than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh because it was he who had laid the foundation stone 28 years ago,” Biren said. Manmohan Singh was Member-Secretary of the Planning Commission from April 1980 to September 1981.

Initially planned at an estimated cost of Rs 15 crore in 1980, the Khuga project has been finally completed at a total expenditure of Rs 381.28 crore. The project which has a catchment area of 321 sq km, has a reservoir with a capacity to hold 86.08 million cubic metres of water.

But what is worrying the authorities is the reducing rainfall in the area. “Though the normal average annual rainfall in its catchment area was 1320 mm when the project was initially drawn up, the average rainfall has gone down in the past two decades,” said an official in the project.

“The government has already launched a massive afforestation programme in the catchment areas so that we can keep the rain there,” Biren said. The 720 tribal families belonging to 16 villages which had submerged in the dam have been already rehabilitated and included in the afforestation project, he claimed.

The state government also has plans to develop the nearby villages for attracting tourists. “The location being so beautiful and the local people being peace-loving and enterprising, we have plans to develop a couple of tourist villages around the dam site,” the minister added.