Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the 43-year-old Saryu Nahar National project in Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur district on Saturday.

The project will provide assured water for irrigation of over 14 lakh hectares of land and benefit about 29 lakh farmers of over 6,200 villages of Eastern UP.

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In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said, “The work on the project started in 1978 but due to lack of continuity of budgetary support, interdepartmental coordination and adequate monitoring, it got delayed and was not completed even after nearly four decades.”

The PMO pointed out that the Prime Minister’s vision for farmer welfare and empowerment, and his commitment to prioritising long pending projects of national importance, brought much-needed focus on the project.

“Consequently in 2016, the project was brought under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana with the target to complete it in a time-bound manner. In this endeavour, innovative solutions were found for new land acquisition to construct new canals and fill the critical gaps in the project, and also for resolving the pending litigation related to the previous land acquisitions. The renewed focus on the project has resulted in the project being completed in only about four years,” the PMO said.

The Saryu Nahar National Project has been built with a total cost of more than Rs 9,800 crore, of which more than Rs 4,600 crore was provisioned in the last four years. The project also involves the interlinking of five rivers – Ghaghara, Saryu, Rapti, Banganga and Rohini to ensure optimum usage of water resources of the region.

It will benefit nine districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh namely – Bahraich, Shravasti, Balrampur, Gonda, Siddharthnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Gorakhpur and Maharajganj. “The farmers of the region, who were the worst sufferers of the inordinate delay in the project, will now immensely benefit from the upgraded irrigation potential. They will now be able to grow crops on a larger scale and maximise the agri-potential of the region,” the PMO added.