WATER STORAGE CAPACITY OF NEWLY CONSTRUCTED RESERVOIRS

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RAJYA SABHA

The Union Minister of State for Water Resources, Smt. Bijoya Chakravarty informed the Rajya Sabha today in written reply that it is essential to store and utilize the additional rain water and rivers in the country. There is large variation in time and space in rainfall. About 80% of the rainfall occurs during the monsoon period. Consequently, there is considerable variation in the availability of flows in the rivers from time to time within a year. Variations are also observed from year to year. Further, the requirements and the availability at different time also vary considerably. Therefore, it is considered necessary to store the available water in reservoirs whenever it is more than the requirements to utilize the same when requirement is more than the available flows.

The Minister further said that total number of large reservoirs in the country is 3596. These reservoirs have 177 billion cubic metre live storage capacity.