Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti and Social Justice & Empowerment Sh. Rattan Lal Kataria, today launched a Mobile application for Geo tagging of the components of projects under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana- Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme(PMKSY-AIBP) of the Department of WR, RD& GR under Ministry of Jal Shakti.

On the occasion of launch of the App through Video Conferencing from Panchkula, the Minister said that in 2016-17, the Union Govt, in consultation with States, prioritized Ninety-nine (99) ongoing Major/ Medium Irrigation (MMI) Projects in the country, for completion in phases under PMKSY-AIBP. The completion of these projects will ensure creation of additional irrigation potential of 34.64 lakh hectare all over the country which would result in protective irrigation and bring much desired rural prosperity.So far, out of 99 projects, 44 projects have been completed and 21.33 Lakh ha. of targeted irrigation potential has been achieved. Remaining projects are at various stages of completion.

The Minister said that in order to track the pace of work and actual status of the projects, the Ministry with the help of Bhaskaracharya National Institute of Space Applications & Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) has developed and launched the mobile application.

Sh. Kataria added that wherever possible, as a part of digital India campaign of the Union Govt led by  Prime Minister Sh. Narender Modi, advanced Technology and Latest techniques have been adopted in the monitoring of these projects for keeping a track of their progress and bottlenecks in the execution. In this regard, an online Management Information System (MIS) has been developed for time to time review of the progress of works in projects. The Remote Sensing techniques are also being used to assess the cropped area in the command area of the prioritized projects.

He further said that Mobile Application can be used by monitoring team/ project authorities to capture the image of project component along with other details such as location, type of canal/ structure, completion status, etc and this captured information can be submitted by the user for geo-tagging on the GIS portal developed for this purpose.The mobile application can be operated in both online & offline mode depending on the network availability in the region.

The Minister said that launch of the app is a step forward in the efforts of the Ministry of Jal Shakti for realizing Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision of “Doubling the Farmers Income”.

The Officers from the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Central Water Commission and Bhaskaracharya National Institute of Space Applications & Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) attended the event through VC from all over the country.

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