TNPSC Thervupettagam

Census of Water bodies in India

April 25 , 2023 441 days 398 0
  • The Ministry of Jal Shakti released a report of the first-ever water body census recently.
  • It was conducted in 2018-19, the census is also the first time that such an exercise has been conducted in the country.
  • It is a database of water bodies, which provides information about ponds, tanks, lakes and reservoirs in India.
  • India has 24.24 lakh water bodies like ponds, tanks, and lakes.
  • 97.1% (23,55,055) water bodies are in rural areas and only 2.9% (69,485) are in urban areas.
  • West Bengal is accounting the most (7.47 lakh) and Sikkim the least (134).
  • The top five states in terms of a number of water bodies are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Assam.
  • They constitute around 63 per cent of the total water bodies in the country.
  • The top five States in terms of the number of water bodies in urban areas are West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Tripura.
  • In terms of the number of water bodies in rural areas, top five States are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Assam.
  • 59.5 per cent of water bodies are ponds, followed by tanks (15.7 per cent), reservoirs (12.1 per cent), Water conservation schemes/percolation tanks/check dams (9.3 per cent), lakes (0.9 per cent) and others (2.5 per cent).
  • It was found that 55.2 per cent of water bodies are owned by private entities whereas 44.8 per cent of water bodies are in the domain of public ownership.

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