HYDERABAD: Sanjay, who is on a walkathon, said at a public meeting in Gadwal on Thursday that he took up the RDS modernisation issue with the Centre which assured to complete the works within six months. However, sources in the Irrigation department recalled that the AP farmers created law and order problems several times when Karnataka officials started the modernisation works.
The then AP Irrigation Minister Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao too skipped the tripartite meetings, they said. As per the agreement, the RDS modernisation works will be executed by Karnataka, as the project is in its jurisdiction, and Telangana will provide Rs 700 crore required for the works. However, AP officials did not allow the work to go on.
Recently, a Krishna River Management Board team inspected the RDS and submitted a report to the Jal Shakti Ministry that the works can be completed within six months.“Telangana has no objection if the Centre completes the wo-rks. The moot question is whether the Centre can prevail upon AP and Karnataka?” asked a Telangana official, who was part of the KRMB team that visited the RDS thrice recently.
TS never got its share
The Bachawat Tribunal allocated 17.1 tmcft of water to RDS. The length of the main canal of RDS is 142 km of which the first 42 km are in Karnataka and the remaining 100 km in Telangana.The RDS canal is intended to provide irrigation and drinking water to Alampur Assembly segment. While the RDS canal is supposed to irrigate 87,500 acres in Alampur, not even 20,000 acres have got water in the history of RDS.
The share of Telangana under RDS is 15.9 tmcft, but the actual realisation by the State has never crossed 5 tmcft. To overcome this historical injustice, the TRS government constructed Thummilla LIS at an estimated Rs 780 crore to irrigate 50,000 acres in erstwhile Mahabubnagar district.
Work on project began in 1946