Pune: Paani Foundation, set up by Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, today announced the second edition of 'Satyamev Jayate Water Cup', with an aim to extend the watershed management programme to 30 tehsils in Maharashtra.
In its first edition, the water conservative initiative under 'Satyamev Jayate Water Cup' had been implemented in three tehsils.
The Cup is a competition between different villages to see who can do the maximum work for watershed management and water conservation in the period of the competition. The competition period of the first edition of the Cup was between April 20 and June 5, 2016.
According to the foundation, 116 villages took part in the competition to make their villages water-sufficient and total water storage created by the competing villages was 13,68,000 litres of water.
"The first edition of water cup was a pilot project and with its success, we now want to extend the watershed management programme to 30 more talukas in Maharashtra to make the villages water-sufficient with people's participation," Aamir said.
The actor, along with organisation's CEO, Satyajit Bhatkal, was here to present entire plan for the second edition of the Cup and interacted with 700 volunteers of 'Bhartiya Jain Sanghtana' (BJS), a city-based organisation.
BJS has decided to join the water conservative initiative of Paani Foundation.
"Since, we are scaling up our battle against drought in the second edition with an aim to take the initiative to 30 tehsils, it will be a challenge for us as we will have to increase our expertise. We will have to scale up on our training facilities so that the quality of knowledge remains the same," the actor said.
Pitching for public participation to make the state drought free, Aamir said that if society determines and gets united, 100 per cent water will be saved.
On the occasion, he interacted with children of farmers, who have committed suicide over last few years, studying at BJS' educational rehabilitation centre here.
