hyderabad
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has termed the White Paper on irrigation tabled in the Assembly by the government on Saturday as a document full of mistakes and accused the government of wilfully delaying the rehabilitation of Medigadda Barrage purely for political mileage by allowing the structure suffer higher damage without taking up its restoration process.
While speaking during the short discussion on “Telangana State Irrigation Sector – White Paper”, BRS MLA and former Minister for Irrigation T. Harish Rao said, “You (Congress) are in government and you are at liberty to order any probe and take action against those found responsible for the mistakes”.
‘Complete restoration’
He also said that politicising the Medigadda issue would ultimately cause loss to people and requested the government to complete the restoration work before the onset of monsoon.
Citing examples against claims made by the government in the White Paper, he stated that Mid Manair reservoir was completed during BRS rule by spending ₹775 crore for land acquisition and other pending works, including seepages in the structure. On the redesigning of Pranahita-Chevella and change of location of the barrage to divert water, Mr. Harish Rao said it was due to Maharashtra’s refusal and environmental (wildlife sanctuary) issues linked to the barrage, non-availability of required water and insufficient online storage capacity.
Irrespective of the government’s argument that Kaleshwaram had failed to create substantial irrigation potential so far, giving water for two crops to the ayacut of SRSP Stage-II, increase in paddy production to nearly 3 crore tonnes, filling 2,143 tanks to supplement water to 1.67 lakh acres, stabilisation of 17 lakh acres ayacut under SRSP Stage-I and II and 20,500 acres by diverting water to Haldi and Kudelli rivulets was possible due to the Kaleshwaram project.
On the new ayacut getting water under Kaleshwaram, Mr. Harish Rao said it would take time as it had happened with all major projects and explained how only 25,000 acres was given water under SRSP 11 years after it was taken up and the total ayacut of 9.5 lakh acres could get water only in 2008-09. Similar was the case with Kalwakurthy, Nettempadu, Bhima and Devadula lift irrigation projects.
CAG faulted in the past
On the CAG report terming Kaleshwaram as unviable, Mr. Harish Rao said that even former Chief Ministers N. Chandrababu Naidu and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had faulted these reports stating that the statutory body was not technically qualified on several subjects.
