Mission Kakatiya Revived 35,000 Tanks: Harish Rao

Replying to a brief discussion on Mission Kakatiya in the Legislative Council on Tuesday, Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao promised greater vigilance and enforcement measures for the implementation of the water project which aimed at reviving over 46,000 tanks, and said that an online mechanism was already put in place to ensure transparency and act against complaints.

The Irrigation Minister said that the mechanism ensured transparency right from payment of bills to complaints related to quality of work and encroachments.

Of the 337 complaints that were received, 140 complaints had already been acted upon. A few engineers were suspended for compromising on quality of work, Rao said. However he assured the House that majority of the engineers worked hard for the project despite a sharp hike in work burden.

For better monitoring, 37,000 tanks had been geo-tagged with the help of the NRSA. All the details of these tanks, their extent, ayacut and encroachments, if any, were just a click away, he said.

Responding to the suggestions from the Ruling and Opposition members - Shabbir Ali, Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, N Ramachandra Rao, K Rajagopal Reddy, N Lakshman Rao and others - he said that serious steps would be taken to protect the 169 urban lakes in the twin cities as well as other districts, which were becoming cess pools.

"Mission Kakatiya will replenish our age-old minor irrigation systems, with people's participation," he said. The program already won appreciations from several quarters, and Niti Aayog recommended a sanction of Rs. 5,000 crores for the scheme, he added.

Rao said that in the first phase, launched in March 2015, the revival of 8,165 tanks was taken up spending Rs. 2,595 crores. Of those, works of 8,059 tanks were nearing completion. In the second phase, 1,536 of 8,806 tanks had been completed. And the rest would be completed by June 2017, he said.

He assured the House that Phase-3 of the project would commence in January 2017, and would focus on repairing feeder channels, fixing breached tanks and constructing new tanks wherever necessary.

The Minister also said that around 35,000 tanks were filled up and expected to cater to 7.5 lakh acres ayacut, the highest ever in over a decade. Also, the average groundwater table in the State increased to 8.42 metres.