It's been over three and half decades since the government began construction of the Babai Irrigation Project, one of the national pride projects, which has achieved only 65 percent of the physical progress so far. The development of the Babai Irrigation Project commenced in the fiscal year 1988/89 and the completion deadline has been set to FY 2025/26. Given the current pace of the construction, it is unlikely that the project would be completed in the next three and half years. The project has to complete 35.76 percent of the remaining work by that time to meet the construction deadline. However, project officials say that there is a challenge in completing the remaining work during that period.

The physical progress of the project in mid-July was 62.23 percent. And, only 2.01 percent of additional physical progress has been achieved in the first six months of this fiscal year. The project officials admit this progress is not satisfactory.

In order to complete the construction of the project within the specified deadline, physical progress should be made at the rate of 3 percent quarterly, 6 percent semi-annually and 12 percent annually. However, the report of the project has confirmed that work has not been done accordingly. Now, project officials say there is no option but to extend the deadline. Although the construction started in FY 1988/89, the funding was inadequate at the beginning. Later, in FY 2012/13, Babai Irrigation was given the status of a 'national pride project', and after this, a larger budget was allocated for the project. However, the construction of the project was again affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and the delay by the contractor. Ramakrishna Ghorasaini, Information Officer of the project, said that it is difficult to complete the construction within the stipulated timeframe. "While the construction of the project was going smoothly, the pandemic stalled the works for almost two years," he said, adding, "Last year, the contractors did not work citing the rise in the price of construction materials." The project was launched by the government with the aim of providing irrigation facilities to around 36,000 hectares of arable land in the Bardia district. The total cost of the project is estimated at Rs18.96bn, which will be invested by the government. So far, Rs11.63bn has been spent on the project. Initially, the estimated cost of the project was Rs2bn which has gone up with the delay in the construction with each passing year.