Forest dept has agreed to hand over 500 acres for Yettinahole project: Deputy CM Shivakumar

PTI, Jun 14, 2024, 10:03 AM IST

Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Thursday said the state Forest department has agreed to hand over 500 acres of land, which is crucial for the implementation of Yettinahole drinking water project.

He said this after a meeting with Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda and Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre at Vikasa Soudha here.

“The Forest department has handed over 500 acres of forest land for the project. In return, the Revenue department has agreed to handover equal area of revenue land to the Forest department. The process will be completed soon,” Shivakumar, who is also the Water Resources Minister said.

The meeting, which was also attended by officials and T B Jayachandra, Karnataka government’s Special Representative in Delhi, discussed the progress of Yettinahole and Upper Bhadra projects.

The Yettinahole project is aimed at providing drinking water to parts of Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Tumakuru, Ramanagara and Bengaluru Urban districts by drawing 24 tmcft of water from the Yettinahole river in Sakleshpur taluk of Hassan district.

Noting that officials have identified challenges facing the projects and discussions were held regarding solutions in the meeting, Shivakumar said, “there were bottlenecks at 20 different places over a stretch of 260 km pertaining to forest land. We conducted a joint survey involving the Forest department and Revenue departments and the issue is now resolved. The work will start soon.”

A compensation of Rs 51 crore needs to be given to farmers in some places, of which Rs 10 crore has already been released, he said.

There are differences between the Forest and Revenue department over the compensation and this will be discussed in the Cabinet meeting.

“The balancing reservoir in Doddaballapura taluk is pending and preparations are on to start the work. In the first phase, water will be pumped to a distance of 48 km by next month. A technical committee has been formed to explore using water which is currently flowing into the sea,” he added.