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Departmental set up: Before 1956, fisheries activities in the eight districts of the Vidarbha region and the three districts viz., Chhindwara, Seoni and Betul, now under Madhya Pradesh, were looked alter by an Assistant Fisheries Development Officer posted at Nagpur, while the Assistant Fisheries Development Officer with headquarters at Bhandara was in charge of fish seed collection scheme with statewide jurisdiction. The post of Assistant Fishery Development Officer was redesignated as the Superintendent of Fisheries with the Reorganisation of States in 1956. Subsequently, the Superintendent of Fisheries, Bhandara, was placed in charge of the fisheries activities in Bhandara district, while the Superintendent of Fisheries, Nagpur, supervised the work in the remaining seven districts of the Vidarbha region. Both the Superintendents were responsible directly to the Director of Fisheries, Bombay.

With the addition of one more post of Superintendent under the Second Five Year Plan in 1958 with headquarters at Chandrapur, the work in Chandrapur and as was transferred to him. The post of Assistant Director of Fisheries was created with headquarters at Nagpur as a regional head for Vidarbha region. With this, the Superintendent of Fisheries, Nagpur has control over Akola district alongwith the districts of Nagpur, Wardha, Amravati and Buldhana.

In order to undertake the fisheries developmental activities and at the same time bring about amelioration in the socio-economic condition of the fishermen, the Department of Fisheries established an office of the Superintendent of Fisheries under the Government of Maharashtra on December 27th 1967, at Akola. The Superintendent of Fisheries, Akola, is in charge of Akola, Amravati and Buldhana districts. To look after the developmental activities of this district he is assisted by one Assistant Superintendent of Fisheries exclusively for the district.

The Assistant Director of Fisheries is the planning, supervising and co-ordinating officer for all the activities in the department in the three divisions of the Vidarbha region.

Duties: The duties of the Superintendent of Fisheries, are as follows:

(i) To carry out survey of new sheets of water to assess their suitability for pisciculture;

(ii) to stock tanks and ponds with suitable varieties of fish every year;

(iii) to maintain nurseries and to nurture fry in them;

(iv) to form and supervise all the fisheries co-operative societies and to devise ways and means to improve the socio-economic conditions of fishermen;

(v) to investigate applications from fishermen for loan and subsidy from the Government;

(vi) to effect loan recoveries and credit the money into the treasury;

(vii) to associate and encourage fishermen to take advantage of different schemes of the department;

(viii) to collect statistics of fish and other data pertaining to fisheries and fishermen of the district;

(ix) to give technical guidance to the deep tank fishing operations conducted by the societies;

(x) to supervise the working of ice and cold storage plant; and

(xi) to supervise in general the work of development of fisheries in areas under his jurisdiction.

Fisheries Co-operatives: Improvement of socio-econimic condition of fishermen has been one of the main objectives of the Fisheries Department. Attention is focused on the formation of fisheries co-operatives. At present, there are five fishermen's co-operative alive societies functioning in the district. The societies together have a membership of 113 and a total share capital of Rs. 9,050. Financial assistance is granted to these societies by giving subsidy on purchase of nylon and other fishery requisites, loans and subsidy for construction of rearing ponds and nurseries, desilting and renovating of tanks and for purchase of carp fry to increase the stocking intensity of the tanks for increasing the production of fish.

Fishing rights: Fishing rights in the rivers are not leased out in the district. Government tanks belong to Revenue, Irrigation and Forest Departments whereas some tanks are owned by local bodies like municipalities, grampanchayats, etc. Generally, the tank is auctioned in favour of the highest bidder, preference being given to the fisheries co-operative societies or fishermen. Moreover, the tanks are not given on longterm lease to the fish fanners. The Department undertakes the fishing activities in the Ekburji, Risod and Sawargaon tanks. Pisciculture is also undertaken by local bodies, grampanchayats and individual pisciculturist.

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