Cooch Behar Municipality to take ten ponds on lease for pisciculture

 

COOCH BEHAR, Jan. 1: The Congress-run Cooch Behar Municipality is going to practice pisciculture to raise its revenue. As a new resource to earn revenue it is now ready to take lease of ten dighis (large ponds). According to the plan the civic body will take the ponds in the town from the fisheries department. The ponds will be handed over to the civic body very shortly, fisheries department sources said.

 

Fisheries department sources said they will handover ten out of twelve dighis in Cooch Behar town including Sagar Dighi to the Cooch Behar Municipality on lease for pisciculture. Following government norms the dighis will be handed over to the members of four Fish Production Groups (FPG) authorised by the civic body, as the civic body cannot take lease of the dighis directly. Each of the group is consisting of ten or eleven members selected by the civic body. According to the norms a single group should be formed of at least eight members, a fishery official said.

 

Chairman of Cooch Behar Municipality Mr Biren Kundu said the civic body is the owner of Mali Dighi only. Cooch Behar is known as Dighir Sahar (town of ponds) since the days of Maharajas. "Now, the government is eager to handover the remaining dighis on lease to us and we are also ready to take these for pisciculture", Mr Kundu said. The waterbodies of the dighis are under fisheries department and the banks of the dighis concerned are of land revenue department. "To maintain clean environment in the town we may ask the land revenue department to handover the banks to us", he said.

 

When asked, the assistant director of fisheries, Mr Sudhir Chandra Dutta said the civic body would have to submit a fee of Rs 1.34-lakh for the first year of the five-year lease-period for the ten dighis. "If they submit the specified amount regularly the lease-period may be extended for another five-year", he said. But when the handover of the dighis will take place? "It depends on submission of the fee only", Mr Dutta replied. []