June 1 2009: The 35-metre-long breach in the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL) Maliya Canal branch has adversely affected the supply of drinking water to Rajkot, Jamnagar and Kutch districts.The issue of breaches was raised by Himanshu Upadhyay and others last year when this happened,  but no progress has been made in addressing this and other ecological command area concerns.

 SSNL mum over canal breaches  | Canal floods surroundings | Water supply affected for 10 days

Himanshu Upadhyay, senior researcher, New Delhi,   wrote in EPW, July 26 2008 on last years' breaches:

Not only did the project authorities ignore these breaches to the canal, they have also been casual in addressing the huge gap that exists between claims on command area development progress and irrigation potential created thereby vis-a-vis the irrigation potential utilised. The figure of irrigation potential utilised has stagnated at 1.53 lakh hectares from June 2006 to June 2007, even as the Gujarat government had raised the dam height from 110.64 metres to 121.92 metres, as reported by the Socio Economic Review for the past two years.It appears that the environment subgroup of the NCA has a huge task ahead of ensuring that project proponents do address command area ecological concerns and ensure that the planning assumptions in irrigation distribution are not falsified.