Since 2014, Telangana has seen a considerable rise in irrigated agricultural land. The net irrigated area – the actual land where irrigation was used for growing crops in an agricultural year – went up by 95 percent, from 17.26 lakh hectares in 2014-15 to 33.64 lakh hectares in 2020-21. The gross irrigated area – total area under crops, counted as many times as the number of times it is irrigated – went up nearly 123 percent from 25.28 lakh hectares to 56.37 lakh hectares.
This data from the union agriculture ministry’s land use statistics resonates with the Bharat Rashtra Samithi government’s claims of more than doubling the irrigated area in the state, keeping with the promise of providing neellu (water resources) to farmers after bifurcating from Andhra Pradesh in 2014.
