Water tops Rajasthan agenda: Deputy CM Sachin Pilot

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for water conservation seems to have jostled into the Congress-ruled state’s rural development agenda.

Deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, who also leads the Panchayati Raj and rural development portfolios, told ET that Rajasthan will create water conservation structures, revive old bawris, water harvesting structures and common pools and link them to the central job scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

“The job guarantee scheme will now provide water security to people. This year, rains have been good. We should make the most of it by storing and conserving the water through old, traditional ways of creating bawris, tanks and ponds,” he said.

The Modi government in its second term, in a renewed thrust on water conservation, created the jal shakti ministry under a full-fledged Cabinet minister. Jal shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who also belongs to Rajasthan, has written to all village heads to conserve water and replenish water bodies.

Pilot said that water has always been of top the Congress government’s agenda. “Water conservation is our utmost priority, especially when we live in a state which has the largest arid region,” Pilot said.