Minister for Agriculture S. Niranajan Reddy has stated that Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation Project would serve its intended purposes completely only if the construction of online reservoirs is completed as they take water to the tail-end ayacut without any problem.
In a review meeting held here on Saturday with the officials of the Irrigation Department, in which the legislators of the command area of the project too participated, the Minister directed the officials to complete the pending land acquisition to complete the online reservoirs as intended by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
Legislators G.Balaraju, G. Jaipal Yadav, M. Janardhan Reddy and A. Venkateshwar Reddy and irrigation officials, including Engineer-in-Chief C. Muralidhar, Chief Engineer L. Ananth Reddy, Superintending Engineer K. Anjaiah and other field engineers, participated in the meeting.
The Minister asked the field engineers to identify all pending works of the project and complete land acquisition with the help of revenue officials at the earliest. He would also hold a meeting soon with the district officials of Nagarkurnool and Wanaparthy to speed up land acquisition and other cooperation needed from them.
Noting that bringing Yedula Reservoir into use would reduce burden on the Kalwakurthy project, the Minister asked the engineers to identify and complete works and other shortcomings. Yedula Reservoir would also give the first benefit of the Palamuru-Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Project, the Minister noted.
Asking the irrigation engineers to finalise the new online reservoirs pertaining to Kalwakurthy project, the Minister reminded them that the Chief Minister had wished their completion in a phased manner so that the project water could be taken to tail-end farmers. He also wanted them to speed up construction of feeder channels and take stringent action, including registering criminal cases, against those indulging in breaching the canals as the tail-end farmers were suffering badly due to such acts in the upper reaches of the project canals.
Assuring that the government was committed to provide water till the crops under the ayacut were harvested, the Minister urged the engineers to prepare plans to increase the water carrying capacity of the main canal to 4,000 cusecs from the existing 3,000 cusecs. Further, he stated that complete justice to the notified ayacut would be done only if the water is supplemented from Vattem Reservoir being constructed as part of the Palamuru-Rangareddy project.
Mr. Niranjan Reddy told the engineers to take up works on the lifts proposed at Karne thanda and Markandeya lift to give water to the new ayacut.
