Gandhinagar, Jun 9 (IANS): Gujarat Chief Minister, Vijay Rupani on Tuesday announced that the phase 2 and phase 3 of the Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI) scheme to fill Saurashtra's 115 dams with Narmada water will be completed by August 15 and March, 2021 respectively and the officials concerned have been instructed accordingly.

The chief minister headed the progress review meeting regarding the works carried out under the second and third phase of SAUNI in Gandhinagar.

Rupani said,"SAUNI is a significant scheme reflecting the engineering feat to bring the Narmada river waters to fill 115 dam reservoirs in Saurashtra and thereby provide drinking and irrigational waters to 737 villages and 31 cities of 11 districts of Saurashtra region. The first phase of the scheme is completed and now filling of 16 dam reservoirs is possible."

"Now the second phase works of 547 kms to fill 57 reservoirs is also near its completion. The department is instructed to finish all the second phase works by the August 15th," Rupani said.

Explaining the 3rd phase the Gujarat Chief Minister said, "42 dam reservoirs needs to be filled through 457 kilometres of pipeline through 3 links. The department has been instructed to finish this work by the March 2021 and plan accordingly. Manufacture of 288 kilometres that is 63 per cent of the third phase already been completed."

The state government has spent Rs 14,707 crore in four links of the scheme where Rs 6,854 crore have been spent to finish the first phase and Rs 6,973 crore have been utilised for the second phase which is nearing completion.