Envious Congress Stalling Projects: Pocharam

Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy today said that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is aware of the farmers' problems and was determined to complete all irrigation projects with appropriate redesigning.

Addressing a press conference at the TRS Legislature Party office along with MLC K Prabhakar, the minister said that the previous rulers had pocketed the funds of the projects without completing them and had also taken up canal works for Pranahitha without permissions, he alleged. "We will complete all the projects left incomplete by the previous governments, and irrigate 13 lakhs acres in north Telangana," he claimed.

The TRS government was determined to irrigate one crore acres in the state over four years despite the envious opposition creating hurdles to the projects, he said. He alleged that the Congress was afraid of a bad future for it if the projects were completed, and was therefore creating hurdles, mainly in the form of court cases, but that his government would battle them all and get things done.

During this rainy season about 255 TMC waters had gone in waste into the sea, and there was not a single drop of water in the Godavari basin, he lamented, and attributed it to inefficiency and lack of a plan to complete the projects. The SRSP revival scheme would from the next year help irrigate crops in Warangal, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Adilabad which used to be deprived of waters.

The KCR government would also come up with a separate budget for agriculture next year, and give Rs 4,000 per acre towards farm investment and waters for crops, he said.