Harish Rao Opens Two Palamur Irrigation Lifts

In a major respite to the inhabitants of the Mahabubnagar district, Telangana Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao today commissioned two lifts to release waters from the Kalwakurthy reservoir under the Palamur Lift Irrigation Scheme to irrigate Palamur's parched lands and provide potable water to its farmers.

Following the orders of the Telangana government, Rao commissioned the second and third gates of the reservoir which will allow the Krishna river water to flow towards Jonnalaboguda (Mahabubnagar). This will help irrigate one lakh acres in the Kalwakurty, Achampet and Kollapur areas of the district, and provide waters to a net 2.5 lakh acres within three months.

Releasing Rs. 10 crores in advance towards the payment of the bills for the project, Rao exhorted the engineers and administrative officials at the Project Office to expedite the works in order to irrigate six lakh acres by the next Kharif season.

Talking to the press, the minister said that the goal was to complete 30% of the works at the reservoir within nine months so that they could open other gates to irrigate more lands. Now that this goal was achieved and the gates were opened, he said that the next goal would be to irrigate all the lands coming under the scheme within the next two-and-a-half years as promised by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.

"Following KCR's directives, we have persistently monitored the works. The decades-long dream of providing water to the parched fields of Mahabubnagar has finally come true," he said.

The irrigation minister slammed the Opposition leaders for "obstructing" the projects such as Kalwakurthy and Mallanna Sagar, and their recent protests against the signing of the Godavari irrigation agreement.

The TDP leaders in Telangana had no moral right to live in the State as they had tried to stall the Kalwakurthy lift works by filing endless cases, he said.

He also slammed the Congress and TDP governments of the then united Andhra Pradesh for failing to complete the projects and ignoring the Telangana region.

"The successive governments made tall promises of turning Palamur into a green corridor, but ended up parching its lands," he alleged.