Bisheshwar Mishra / New Delhi
The Ministry of Jal Shakti released the report on the sixth census on minor irrigation schemes on Saturday. As per the report, 23.14 million minor irrigation (MI) schemes have been reported in the country, out of which 21.93 million are Ground Water (GW) and 1.21 million are Surface Water (SW) schemes. For the first time, the information about gender of the owner of MI scheme was also collected in case of individual ownership. Out of all the individually owned schemes, 18.1 per cent are owned by women.
Uttar Pradesh possesses the largest number of MI schemes in the country followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The same ranking of states follows for the GW schemes. Maharashtra leads in SW schemes followed by Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand.
The report also revealed that there has been an increase of about 1.42 million in MI schemes as compared to the previous census.