Gurugram, Dec 17 (IANS): To make people aware of the falling groundwater level in Gurugram, QR codes are being installed in the villages under the Atal Bhujal Yojana.
On scanning the QR code, information about the groundwater level of the concerned village, village population, Sarpanch and other information will appear.
QR codes are being installed at government schools, Panchayat Bhawan and Anganwadi centres of 153 villages in the district. Atal Bhujal programme is being run under the aegis of the Irrigation Department of Haryana.
The central government started this campaign on December 25, 2019. The objective of this programme is to collect rainwater, raise the groundwater level and prevent water from being wasted.
For this, several steps are being taken in the selected villages. This includes monitoring of groundwater, renovation of ponds and connecting them to canals, among other works. So that the exploitation of groundwater is reduced and the water level can be improved. At the same time, people are also being made aware to save water.
According to information, the groundwater level is 74.54 feet in Farrukhnagar block, 110.82 feet in Pataudi and 66.84 feet in Sohna.
It may be noted that the Central Ground Water Board classified the city as a dark zone in 2013. According to a groundwater report, the average groundwater level in the city was 6.64 meters in 1974, which fell to 19.85 meters in 2006 and 26.3 meters in 2014. In 2021, it went down to 36.99 meters.
The information which QR codes will provide includes the name of the district, name of the block, population of the village, Gram Panchayat area, cultivable land, irrigable land, name of the Sarpanch, name of the Bhujal Saheli, availability of water and other information.
"Under the Atal Bhujal Yojana, there is an emphasis on water conservation in villages. For this, works like groundwater, tube wells, rainwater harvesting, maintenance of ponds and other works are being done. QR codes are being installed to know the groundwater level in many villages. People can get complete information including groundwater on mobile," said Manish Chitkara, Executive Engineer Irrigation Department of Haryana.