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Ladakh's Irrigation and Flood Control Department on 14 August 2026 diverted glacial meltwater from the Stok village nallah in Leh into the existing Igoo-Phey irrigation canal.
About 90 million litres a day that previously ran off unused into the Indus is now being used for irrigation - roughly 80 million litres into the Igoo-Phey Canal and about 10 million litres towards Chuchot.
The diversion added about 26 cusecs to the canal: 19 cusecs towards Igoo upstream and 7 cusecs towards Phey downstream.
The extra water irrigates more than 1,000 acres across nearly 12 villages, replacing a restrictive rotational roster with a more regular supply.
The work was done with simple earthwork - two trenches cut with a JCB - at effectively no capital expenditure, under an initiative driven by Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena.
Ladakh is a cold desert: rainfall is tiny, so farming depends almost entirely on glacial meltwater carried by nallahs and canals. The water arrives in a summer surge and most of it drains into the Indus before fields can use it, so villages ration supply through rotational rosters.
Simple Analogy: Plenty of water rushing past the door, and no tap on the pipe.
Governs Ladakh, a Union Territory without a legislature, through a Lieutenant Governor appointed by the President; the Chuchot appeal was made directly to the LG
Executed the diversion on 14 August 2026 by cutting two trenches from the Stok nallah into the Igoo-Phey Canal
Elected councils for Leh and Kargil that handle local development administration in the UT; Leh's council was created in 1995 and Kargil's in 2003
GS Paper 2 > Governance - responsive administration, decentralisation, grassroots participation; GS Paper 1 > Geography, cold deserts and Himalayan drainage; GS Paper 4 > Responsiveness and public service (case study material)
General Awareness > Current events, Indian geography, Union Territories
Cubic feet per second, the standard unit for measuring flow in a canal or stream.
A seasonal stream or watercourse; in Ladakh, typically fed by glacial melt.
An artificial conical glacier that stores winter stream water as ice and releases it as meltwater in spring.