Water woes: 468 more villages in Guj declared scarcity-hit

The Gujarat government has declared another 468 villages of the parched Saurashtra and Kutch region as ‘partially scarcity-hit’, taking the total number of such villages reeling under acute water crisis, to nearly 1,000.

In addition to the 526 villages, which have been put in the red zone, the state government has added 468 villages to the list. With this the total number of scarcity-hit villages in the state has reached  994, stated an official notification issued on Tuesday.

The government action comes after it faced flak from the Supreme Court on late declaration of affected villages as scarcity -hit due to deficient rainfall in the state. The Apex Court had on Tuesday chided the Gujarat government for submitting a note instead of an affidavit on the drought situation and directed it to file a detailed affidavit by April 21.