It is a measure of the backwardness and poverty of the farmers in Gulbarga district that many of them are resorting to distress sale of lands even in the command area of the Upper Krishna irrigation project. The distress sales, which would reduce poor farmers into landless labourers, have to be stopped somehow. The State Government has promulgated the Karnataka Irrigation (Amendment) Ordinance 2003 to ban transfer of land by way of sales, leases, mortgages or exchanges in the major and medium irrigation project areas without prior permission from an irrigation official designated by the Government for the purpose...editorial