NHP e-Bulletin

A Senior-level workshop on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) under NHP was organised during 4th to 5th September 2019 at the National Institute of Hydrology Roorkee. The event was chaired by the Hon’ble Union Minister of Jal Shakti Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and the Secretary DoWR, RD & GR Shri U.P. Singh. The participants of the workshop included the international water resources expert and previous chairman of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Don Blackmore, and various Senior level officers of Central and State NHP Implementing Agencies. Important issues related to water policy, water law and water resources management were discussed and a plan for future activities to be developed in this field was outlined.

The Sixth India Water Week themed ‘Water Cooperation- Coping with 21st Century Challenges’ was organized by the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti from 24-28 September, 2019 at the Vigyan Bhawan and the Indira Gandhi National Culture of Arts in Delhi. The National Hydrology Project participated in this gala event in the technical discussions and as an exhibitor. During the inauguration, the Honourable Minister of Jal Shakti highlighted NHP and the Secretary, DOWR, RD & GR explained the objectives of NHP during his presentation in the plenary session. NHP and many Implementing Agencies had put stalls at the exhibition and displayed their activities in the event. Water professionals from India and abroad and dignitaries including the Secretary, DoWR, RD& GR and representatives from the World Bank visited the NHP stall. India-WRIS being one of the main components under National Hydrology Project was also presented, receiving attention of the visitors who were particularly interested in the availability of nation-wide water resources information on one online platform, its powerful map based data visualization, the ease of access of the portal and the data download features.

As a preparation for the upcoming mid-term review, the Project Implementation Plans (PIP) of all Implementing Agencies are being reviewed and updated. Meetings with all agencies have been held both in the NHP project office in Delhi and at the various agency locations. Agencies have prepared revised PIPs and action plans for implementation. The various PIP items and their progress, revised allocations and the plans for actions on specific areas were discussed in detail. Agencies submitted revised PIPs subsequent to the meetings. Also matters related to expenditure, the status of bids, revision of Annual Work Plans, criteria for engaging joint ventures, progress in benchmark documents and the status of the construction of State Data Centre buildings were discussed in detail.

PIP Review Meeting with various agencies in Andhra Pradesh

Shri N.K. Manglik, Sr. Joint Commissioner NPMU-NHP and TAMC experts discussed the PIP revision and progress of various activities with Nodal Officers from Andhra Pradesh SW, Andhra Pradesh GW, Telangana SW, Telangana GW and NRSC at the NHP - PIP review meetings organised by NPMU at the offices of Andhra Pradesh GW in Vijayawada during 18-19th September 2019. Relevant matters such as expenditure, status of bids, revision of Project Implementation Plan, progress in benchmark documents and construction of State Data Centres were discussed.

PIP Review Meeting: Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh

A preparatory meeting for the mid-term review of the Project Implementation Plan under the National Hydrology Project was held in Raipur on 12th and 13th September, 2019 at the State Data Centre, WRD Bhopal. The meetings were held under the Chairmanship of the respective Chief Engineers in presence of Shri Rakesh Kashyap and Shri Deepak Kumar, Sr. Joint Commissioners from NPMU-NHP. The existing provisions made in the PIP document at the beginning of the project were reviewed and the required modifications to be proposed as a mid-term course correction were identified.

PIP Review Meeting: Assam

The earlier approved PIP has been assessed for the mid-term review and a draft of the proposed modified PIP was sent to the NPMU during the month of September. Dr. Raja Ram Purohit from NPMU has visited the IA Assam office in Basistha, Guwahati on 26th and 27th September. There were prolonged and detailed deliberations on the PIP and a proposed new PIP was prepared. Continuous efforts are being made to accelerate expenditure in accordance with the allocation and will be further pursued while considering all formal requirements. The bidding process for RTDAS in progress and every endeavour is being made to materialize the RTDAS project.

PIP Review Meeting: Karnataka

The PIPs of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry were reviewed in Bengaluru on 16th September, 2019. All three States presented their requirements of modification of theirs PIPs. The Implementing Agencies were urged to expedite the process of implementation of their planned activities in a time bound manner.

PIP Review Meetings: Lucknow, Roorkee and Chandigarh

During the month of September 2019, NPMU-NHP Sr. Joint Commissioner Shri N.K. Manglik visited Lucknow to discuss the review of the PIP with the Implementing Agencies Uttar Pradesh Surface Water and UP Groundwater. On 5th September 2019, Sr. Joint Commissioner Shri N.K. Manglik held meetings with the Implementing Agencies Uttarakhand and NIH in Roorkee to discuss the PIP review. Sr. Joint Commissioner Shri Rakesh Kashyap visited Chandigarh to review the PIPs with BBMP, Punjab and Haryana.

September has been a very productive month for Rajasthan. The installation of RTDAS has started. The first ARG instrument has been installed at Chaksu, Jaipur. The procurement of ADCP has already been completed and now the process of developing rating curves is in progress. Till now 49 rating curves have been prepared for 9 stations. The pre-bid meeting for the “Hiring of services for scanning and digitization of historical data, maps & reports” was held on 6th September 2019 at the SPMU office. The SPMU, Water Resources Department, Government of Rajasthan also participated in the India Water Week from 24th to 28th September 2019 setting up a stall in the exhibition. During the IWW, Rajasthan also presented activities carried out under NHP along with other activities of the Rajasthan water resources department. A training course on GIS and AMP related to groundwater modelling for engineers of the groundwater department was organized at MNIT from 23rd to 27th September 2019. In total 31 participants attended the training course.

The work for the "Supply, Installation, Testing, Commissioning and Maintenance of Real Time Data Acquisition System (RTDAS) for selected Barrages, Reservoirs and Rivers/ Streams in Andhra Pradesh and integration with Data Center located at Vijayawada/ Amaravathi, Andhra Pradesh" was awarded to M/s SEBA AZISTA JV for an amount of Rs. 7.69 Cr. This work includes establishing 55 AWLR– 48 on rivers and 7 on reservoirs – and 16 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) in the State of Andhra Pradesh. The tender for procuring water quality lab equipment has been awarded to M/s SWAN Environmental Pvt Ltd, for an amount of Rs. 1.19 Cr . Andhra Pradesh (Surface Water) has also floated bids for the renovation of divisional and sub divisional offices, construction of a State Data Center for both APSW and APGW and has initiated dam break studies in collaboration with NIH, Kakinada for the Kandaleru and Pulichintala projects.

Following the Consultative Session on National Hydrology Project held on 30th July, 2019 in New Delhi for reviewing the implementation progress of the States and to brainstorm the course correction for the expeditious implementation of NHP, the Secretary, Water Resources Department, Government of Kerala suggested that a workshop for the dissemination of knowledge to the officials involved in NHP should be conducted for the effective implementation of the project in Kerala.

Accordingly, a two day workshop on ‘Knowledge Dissemination and Implementation Support’ was held on 17th and 18th September, 2019 at Hotel South Park, Trivandrum. The event was inaugurated by the Secretary, Water Resources Department, and the Government of Kerala.

The Honourable Minister for Water Resources, Kerala also graced the workshop with his presence and felicitated the resource persons of the workshop from NPMU, the World Bank and TAMC. Shri Rakesh Kashyap, Senior Joint Commissioner from NPMU-NHP, Dr. Raja Ram Purohit, Deputy Director from NPMU-NHP, Shri Anish Bansal from the World Bank, and Shri Murali Reddy, Mr. Peter Ravenscroft and Dr Ashoke Basista from the TAMC were the resource persons. During the workshop, an overview and a report on the status of implementation of NHP was given which was followed by presentations and discussions on issues in water management in Kerala and the role of RTDAS, , awareness on PFMS, MIS and STEP portals and procurement of goods, works and consultancy/non-consultancy services under NHP. Shri Rakesh Kashyap presented an online tour of the revamped India WRIS and the functionalities developed under the generic framework of State WRIS. Around 100 representatives from both the surface and the groundwater departments of Kerala participated. At the end of the workshop, a closed group discussion was also held in the afternoon of 18th September 2019, and the way forward and further action plans of proposed activities and capacity development programmes for the State of Kerala were discussed, along with the finalization of the modified PIP for Kerala.

A three days training program from 23th to 25th September, 2019 on the Use of Remote Sensing and GIS for Water Quality Data Management was conducted by CPCB at the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi. Though abundant water is available in our country, there is a large temporal and spatial variation in its distribution. The continuous monitoring of all sources of water is necessary for water resources management, both in qualitative and in quantitative terms. Geospatial technologies are useful for mapping and monitoring, and this three days workshop was dedicated to providing its participants with an overview of the latest advances in satellite and terrestrial based remote sensing and in GIS technologies for monitoring resources. Faculty from reputed institutes like IIPA, RMSI, DRDO, GGSIPU shared their expertise. About 25 participants from NHP Implementing Agencies including Andhra Pradesh (GW), Bihar (SW), CWPRS, MP (GW), Maharashtra, NRSC, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, West Bengal (SW), Dept of Water Resources, RD & GR participated in this three day training program. Participants also made a visit to RMSI (Risk Management Solutions India, NOIDA).

The preparations for the 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Water Management under NHP to be held from 6th to 8th November 2019 in Pune are in full swing. The 3rd meeting of the Organising Committee took place on 20th September in Pune. On behalf of the NPMU Senior Joint Commissioner Shri Deepak Kumar and Deputy Director Dr. Raja Ram Purohit participated. A large number of abstracts for technical papers to be presented at the conference are being received. The 2nd meeting of the Technical Committee led the Chairman of CWC was held on 23rd September 2019.

• One-day Hands-on training on eSWIS (WIMS), has been scheduled to be held on 15th October, 2019 in New Delhi for four Implementing agencies.
• One day mid-term review session on 22nd October 2019 in New Delhi for concluding the PIP revision and mid- term review process.
• Training on “Remote Sensing & GIS Fundamentals”, 14th to 18th October 2019, Balanagar, Hyderabad, organized by Water Resources Group, National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad.
• Training on “Usefulness and Capability of RS and GIS”, 22th to 24th October 2019, IISM Uppal, Hyderabad.
• One day workshop on "Benchmarking of Minor Irrigation Schemes" on 18th October, 2019, at Indira Gandhi Stadium, Kohima organised by Water Resources Department, Nagaland.
• Workshop/Training on e-SWIS and discharge measurement techniques 15th to 18th October 2019, conducted by Irrigation Research Institute (IRI), Roorkee.
• 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Water Management on 6th to 8th November, 2019 in Pune, organised by Water Resources Department, Government of Maharashtra.