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Irrigation facility impacts significantly on land use intensity, cropping pattern and cropping intensity before increasing productivity and production of crops. These direct benefits of irrigation have been well documented by various studies carried out in different countries including India. Irrigation also helps to reduce rural poverty in a sustained manner by increasing employment opportunities and wage rate for agricultural labourers where the incidence of poverty is reportedly very high. However, until recent years, the role of irrigation development in reducing rural poverty has not been analysed by treating it as an important explanatory variable in the analysis on rural poverty. In this study, keeping this in view, the impact of irrigation development on rural poverty has been analysed in detail using both macro and micro-level (primary) data. The uniqueness of this study is that it has analysed the source-wise impact of irrigation on rural poverty, which is seldom seen in the existing literature on irrigation and poverty nexus.