Flood management including erosion control falls within the purview of the States. Flood management and anti-erosion schemes are formulated and implemented by concerned State Governments as per their priority. The Union Government supplements the efforts of the States by providing technical guidance and also promotional financial assistance for management of floods in critical areas. Integrated flood management approach aims at adopting judicious mix of structural and non-structural measures to provide a reasonable degree of protection against flood damages at economic cost.

To strengthen the structural measures of flood management, Ministry had implemented Flood Management Programme (FMP) during XI & XII Plan for providing Central Assistance to States for works related to flood control, anti-erosion, drainage development, anti-sea erosion, etc. which subsequently continued as a component of "Flood Management and Border Areas Programme" (FMBAP) for the period from 2017-18 to 2020-21 and further extended up to September 2022 with limited outlay.

From the State of West Bengal, 18 projects were included for central assistance under FMP component of ongoing Flood Management and Border Area Programme (FMBAP) of Ministry of Jal Shakti. The 16 completed projects have given protection to an area of around 0.937 Lakh ha and protected a population of about 2.35 million. Central assistance amounting to the tune of Rs. 1051.96 Crore has been released to the State of West Bengal under FMP. Bank protection, anti-erosion measures, river training works are also carried out by Farakka Barrage Project on River Ganga within its jurisdiction of 12.5 km upstream & 6.9 km downstream of Farakka Barrage. During last ten years, an expenditure of Rs. 165 Crores has been incurred by Farakka Barrage Project for implementing such works.

For Non structural measures, Central Water Commission (CWC) is the nodal Organisation entrusted with the task of flood forecasting & early flood warnings in the country. CWC has 16 flood forecasting stations (12 level forecasting stations and 4 inflow forecasting stations) and 80 gauge stations in the State of West Bengal. During flood season 2021 ending 31st December 2021, a total of 488 forecasts have been issued for West Bengal out of which 466 have been found to be within the accuracy limit which works out to 95.49%.

This information was given by the Minister of State, for Jal Shakti, Shri Bishweswar Tudu in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

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