Tulshi village in Maharashtra’s drought-hit Solapur district has been promised a closed water pipeline from the Sina-Madha lift irrigation project by January, after residents highlighted a 25-year water crisis by declaring their 2,700-hectare settlement “up for sale”.
Rural development and panchayati raj minister Jaykumar Gore visited the village on Saturday after a report on the residents’ protest. Gore, who is also Solapur’s guardian minister, said the state government was working to secure the permissions required from the Water Resources Department for the pipeline.
“The chief minister has taken cognisance of Tulshi’s water crisis. He asked me to inspect the ground reality here. And it is indeed a serious problem,” Gore said during his visit, according to the Times of India. He acknowledged that nearby villages had received water through pipelines connected to the Sina-Madha project, while Tulshi had been left without access for decades.
Gore said all permissions for the closed pipeline project would be provided as directed by the chief minister and that the work would be completed by January. The report did not specify the pipeline’s proposed length, capacity, estimated cost or the agency that would execute the work.
Tulshi is located about 9km from the Sina-Madha lift irrigation project, but residents said the village had not received water from it during the 25 years since the project’s existence. The shortage has become more severe this year after the area experienced more than 45 days without rainfall.
The minister’s visit followed a survey by Solapur district collector S Karthikeyan. Karthikeyan told villagers that the irrigation department had carried out a hydrological survey and that a proposal for a canal network would be submitted to the state government.
The residents eventually removed the “for sale” signs after the collector’s statement and the assurance that the water issue would be addressed. The protest had turned a long-running local shortage into a public administrative issue, drawing attention to the gap between the presence of regional irrigation infrastructure and actual village-level access.
Tulshi sarpanch Sharad More said the immediate benefit of receiving pipeline water would be the possible revival of the Bhavani percolation lake, which has dried up this year. According to More, the lake could support water requirements for about 500 acres in the northern part of the village if it is replenished.
The next steps are the completion of permissions from the Water Resources Department, submission of the canal-network proposal and construction of the promised closed pipeline by January.