Introduction

A brief introductionA barrage of length 317 m has been constructed on the Rapti River at Agaiya of Rapti Sonari Rural Municipality in Banke District of Lumbini Province with the aim of providing reliable irrigation facilities on total 42,766 hectares of land of 6 rural municipalities, Kohalpur municipality and Nepalgunj sub-metropolitan of same district. The Sikta Irrigation Project, which was started from F.Y.2062/63 by the Government of Nepal from its own resources, covers command area 33766 hectares on the western side and 9000 hectares on the eastern side of the Rapti River. BackgroundInitially, the concept of Sikta Irrigation Project was proposed as West Rapti Multipurpose Project mentioned in the Pre-Feasibility Study (AD 1975 to AD1976). Pre-feasibility study of Sikta Irrigation Project was done in BS 2032 (AD 1975) by German consulting firm with the help of UNDP and ADB, the feasibility study report of this project was submitted in BS 2036 (AD 1980) by the same organization. From this study, the project was found to be feasible and requested Asian Development Bank for financial assistance to implement the project in 2036. Since the Indian side could not provide the consent over implementation of this project, the Asian Development Bank expressed its inability to provide financial assistance, so the implementation of this project could not proceed. The re-feasibility study of this project was done in BS 2040 (AD 1983) by the Regional Irrigation Directorate under the Department of Irrigation, Environment and Meteorology, while the feasibility study of this project with the financial support of the European Union was last done in BS 2059 (AD 2002). The study completed with the participation of European engineers, it was recommended to implement the project as it was seen to be feasible from the technical and financial aspects. According to the feasibility study, the total cost of this project was estimated 7 billion 45 crores at that time. The implementation period of the Project was kept for seven years. When the project looked attractive, the European Union, Saudi Fund for Development (SFD), Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and OPEC Fund were requested to provide financial support for the implementation of project and these donor organizations shown their interest. For the construction of the project costing about 100 million US dollars, after the above-mentioned organizations had divided among themselves who would support how much money, due to various reasons, this project was again deprived of the opportunity... View More