Mumbai:
As farmers in Maharashtra are being battered by drought, a new stinging report by the state's auditor blames the government for grossly mishandling irrigation projects.
The Comptroller and Auditor General or CAG has found that despite costs shooting up by thousands of crores, nearly 400 canals and dams are incomplete.
For 240 projects that are not complete, the over-spending has been especially excessive, the CAG says. The costs of these projects soared from 7,200 crores to nearly 32,000 crores.
For 10 years, the Irrigation Department in Maharashtra has been headed by Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). In September last year, Mr Pawar's nephew Ajit was forced to resign as Deputy Chief Minister after the opposition and activists alleged that in the last 10 years, 70,000 crores had been spent on canals and dams, but only 0.1% percent was added to the area under irrigation.
Ajit Pawar was the state's water resources minister between 1999 and 2009.
He returned to the cabinet in November last year but created a new controversy a few weeks ago by asking "Should we urinate" while addressing farmer concerns about dams that have run dry. He later called his remark the "biggest political mistake" of his life.