Kathmandu: The Sunsari-Morang Irrigation Project, the largest and oldest irrigation system in Nepal, is facing a critical crisis as a 200 million rupee maintenance budget remains frozen due to the lingering administrative guidelines of a previous caretaker government.
Despite the new government being in power for over two and a half months, no amendments have been made to the restrictive “Project Prioritization and Capital Expenditure Management Guidelines” introduced by the interim administration led by Sushila Karki following the recent civil movements. This bureaucratic stalemate has left project officials struggling to deliver water to farmers’ fields during the peak monsoon season.
The project’s ageing infrastructure, with most components now exceeding 50 years of service, is in a state of advanced decay and risks collapse at any moment. Historically, the project has relied on annual repairs and patchwork maintenance to keep water flowing through its 52-kilometre main canal and 20 branch canals, which together irrigate 68,000 hectares of land across the Morang and Sunsari districts. Currently, the system is forced to transport a massive flow of 60 cubic meters of water per second through structures that are structurally compromised and long overdue for renovation.
Project Chief Manohar Kumar Shah expressed deep concern, noting that the Rs 200 million allocated for essential repairs has been rendered inaccessible by the standing guidelines. These regulations, specifically Clause 14, prohibit any project exceeding one million rupees from being executed through “User Committees” and forbid the splitting of larger projects into smaller segments to bypass this rule.
This has created a catch-22 situation, as the project’s own internal bylaws and regulations mandate that repairs and reconstructions be carried out in coordination with these committees, which are legally registered and tax-compliant entities.
The administrative bottleneck has also paralyzed the project’s ability to conduct smaller repairs via quotations. Because most individual repair jobs naturally exceed the one-million-rupee threshold, the current guidelines, combined with the rigid oversight of auditors, have effectively halted all maintenance work.
Chief Shah lamented that despite numerous attempts to brief the Prime Minister, the Minister of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, and the Finance Minister on these technical and legal contradictions, the leadership has failed to grasp the urgency of the situation, leaving the project to operate on the brink of failure.
The timing of this budget freeze is particularly damaging to the agricultural cycle. The project typically halts water flow for two one-month periods annually—once before the rice harvest and once before the sowing of monsoon paddy—to allow for reconstruction and desilting.
However, because of the frozen funds, these windows of opportunity passed without any work being done. Furthermore, attempts to outsource repairs to external contractors were thwarted by rising costs of construction materials, leading to a lack of interest from bidders. Even in cases where 14 separate repair contracts were eventually awarded, the contractors have failed to initiate work.
The Sunsari-Morang Irrigation Project has a long history, originating from the 1954 Koshi Agreement between Nepal and India. Construction began in 1964 and was handed over to the Nepal government in 1975 after a five-year trial period. Over the decades, the system was expanded and modernized through three phases of World Bank funding, which helped develop command areas, build settling basins, and construct the current underground side intake north of the original structure. These investments were meant to ensure the long-term viability of the system.
Today, the 52-kilometre main canal relies on a complex network of 8 super passages, 36 aqueducts, two siphons, and 16 cross-regulators to manage the heavy flow of the Koshi River. According to Project Chief Shah, all of these critical components are now in a dilapidated state. Without immediate intervention and the lifting of the current administrative restrictions, the task of protecting these fragile structures while meeting the water demands of thousands of farmers is becoming an impossible challenge.
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