PANJIM: Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai will chair a high-level meeting on Wednesday to discuss problems faced by farmers due to non-pumping of water from mining pits, with rivulets running dry leading to a lack of water for agricultural purposes.

The meeting has been called to discuss pumping of water from mining pits and to make available water for irrigation purpose for the farmers.

Speaker Dr Pramod Sawant, Water Resources Minister Vinod Palyekar, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane and Power Minister Nilesh Cabral along with MLAs Ravi Naik, Deepak Pawaskar, Rajesh Patnekar, Pravin Zatye, Prasad Gaonkar, Chandrakant Kavlekar and Nilkant Halankar have been called for the meeting.

Chief Secretary Dharmendra Sharma, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister P Krishnamurthy and other senior officials from the concerned departments like Mines and Agriculture will also be part of the meeting.

Sources in the Mines Department said the leases are now government property and accordingly pumping of water has to be initiated by departments like WRD. “With Supreme Court quashing second renewals, the lease holders have no right on the mines anymore,” sources said. 

The water bodies went dry in November, paving challenge before the farmers on how to irrigating their farms. 

Groups of farmers from Sattari and Bicholim have already petitioned Sardesai, Sawant and Palyekar to resolve the issue.