HYDERABAD: It was a day out for several senior IAS officers on Saturday, who would be otherwise busy with their routine administrative works like going through files at secretariat. As many as 20 IAS officers, 11 senior IAS officers and nine trainee IAS officers visited the ongoing works of massive lift irrigation project Kaleshwaram near Medigadda in Karimnagar.This is the second batch of officers to visit Kaleshwaram. On Thursday, around eight IAS officers visited Kaleshwaram. The idea of the state government is that all the officers should visit the project to know the progress of the works.
Special chief secretary (irrigation) SK Joshi explained the salient features of the project and the progress of the work to the senior IAS officers during their visit.Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd (MEIL) director B Srinivas Reddy, assistant general managers—G Ramakrishna and Krishna Reddy—explained the project works. The officers examined the works including construction of surge pool, tunnels, gravity canals, construction of 400 kv sub-stations, delivery mains and others. The team led by Ajay Misra (energy) included officers Chitra Ramachandran (housing), Rajeshwar Tiwari (health), Rajiv Trivedi (home), Sashank Goel, Sunil Sarma (roads and buildings), G Ashok Kumar (BC welfare), Jayesh Ranjan (IT), Vikas Raj (irrigation), N Siva Sankar (finance), B Venkatesham (tourism) and Anitha Rajendra (home).
While the junior officers were astonished at the massive project, they stated that they were witnessing such a massive project for the first time. Senior officials including Ajay Misra explained the plans for power generation needed for the lift irrigation project. “All the officers expressed satisfaction over the progress of the works and they complimented the MEIL,” according to a release issued by the MEIL later in the day. On their way to Kaleshwaram project, the IAS officers visited Mission Bhagiratha project at Komatibanda in Siddipet district.
Test run in November
Special chief secretary SK Joshi explained that the Kaleshwaram test run would be completed by November this year. The construction of the project would be completed by July next year, he added. Karimnagar district collector Sarfaraz Ahmed explained that there were problems for land acquisition for the project. Ahmed said they would address the problems and complete the land acquisition in next one month’s time.