HYDERABAD: The Telangana government has rewritten history in the irrigation sector by achieving several milestones in the last four years, irrigation minister T Harish Rao has said. “The progress made in the last four years is more than what was achieved in the last 60 years in the combined Andhra Pradesh state with regard to completion of projects and creating additional ayacut,” he claimed.
Speaking at a seminar on the subject organised by the department here on Thursday, the minister enumerated the achievements of the state irrigation department in the last four years. He also felicitated those, from engineer to lashkar (gates operator) , who helped the department carve a niche. “Once the construction of major projects was completed, then the engineers had to concentrate on regulation of water supply, which was very crucial to farmers. The on-and-off system introduced by the department increased the paddy production from 35 bags to 50 bags per acre with less utilisation of water,’’ Harish Rao said.
Chief secretary SK Joshi said, “Optimum utilisation of water in the Nagarjuna Sagar, Sri Ram Sagar and Nizam Sagar reservoirs resulted in higher yields of paddy. With 60 to 70 per cent availability of water, farmers irrigated 10,000 or more acres with just one tmcft of water.
We have provided water to an additional 5.61 lakh acres with the best water management practices. The department’s engineers are the unsung heroes and heroines for reaching several milestones.” Jukkal MLA Hanmanth Shinde described chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao as “design engineer” and irrigation minister Harish Rao as “executive engineer available on site”.
Total IP created in the region between 1956 and 2014 was 20 lakh acres
Water supplied to new ayacut between 2014 and 2018 and to be supplied will be 20 lakh acres
Record was created by getting 10 permissions for Kaleshwaram project`2,716 cr
Congress govts spent `2,716 cr in 10 years to provide water to 13,000 acres
TRS govt spent `1,121 crore and provided water to 2.6 lakh acres
Farmers under Kalwakurthy and Singur got water for the first time under TRS rule 25 tmcft
Mid-Manair project has been completed and it is ready to store 25 tmcft of water
Water allotment increased from 38 tmcft to 60 tmcft to Devadula