DPRs of irrigation projects in Telangana will be cleared soon: MoJS

Hyderabad: Jal Shakti (MoJS) Secretary Pankaj Kumar on Tuesday assured that the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) of half a dozen irrigation projects in Telangana on Godavari River would be cleared soon. He gave this assurance during a video conference with the Chief Secretaries of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Somesh Kumar and Sameer Sharma, respectively, on […]

Hyderabad: Jal Shakti (MoJS) Secretary Pankaj Kumar on Tuesday assured that the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) of half a dozen irrigation projects in Telangana on Godavari River would be cleared soon.

He gave this assurance during a video conference with the Chief Secretaries of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Somesh Kumar and Sameer Sharma, respectively, on the implementation of various provisions of Gazette Notification dated July 15, 2021, regarding Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) and Godavari River Management Board (GRMB).

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During the conference, Somesh Kumar pointed out that the Telangana government had submitted six DPRs for projects including Sita Rama Lift Irrigation Scheme (LIS), Sammakka Sagar Project (Thupakulagudem Project), Mukteshwar(Chinna Kaleshwaram) LIS, Chowtpally Hanumanth Reddy LIS, Modikuntavagu Project and Channaka –Korata Barrage on Godavari River to the Central Water Commission (CWC) in September 2021. The DPRs are still pending with the CWC, he said.

The MoJS Secretary assured that these projects would be cleared soon. As per the decisions taken in the apex council meeting conducted on October 6, 2020, the union Jal Shakti Minister requested Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao to withdraw the case from Supreme Court to consider referring the matter to a tribunal under Section 3 of Inter-State River Water Disputes (ISRWD) Act- 1956.

Subsequently, Telangana withdrew its case from the Supreme Court. Somesh Kumar requested the Central government to take immediate action in this regard. The union Secretary reiterated that the Centre was actively pursuing the matter with the Law Department and soon after receipt of opinion from it, the matter would be referred to the tribunal.

Somesh Kumar also referred to five projects in Godavari basin – Ramappa-Pakala link project, Kaleshwaram Project (Additional 1TMC per day), Kandakurthy LIS, Gudem LIS and PV Narsimharao Kanthanapally Barrage – which were wrongly included in the unapproved list of projects in Gazette Notification of GRMB and asked the Secretary to delete them from the list of unapproved projects.

He observed that since there were no major issues and no common projects for regulation between the two States regarding irrigation projects on Godavari River, there was no need for GRMB.

The union Secretary also assured the Telangana government that it would look into the issues raised by the State government on the illegal irrigation projects taken up by Andhra Pradesh on the Krishna River.

MoJS Additional Secretary Debashri Mukherjee, Joint Secretary Sanjay Awasthi, Telangana Special Chief Secretary Irrigation and Command Area Development (I&CAD) Rajat Kumar, Engineer-in-Chief Irrigation (General) Ch Muralidhar, Engineer-in-Chief Gajwel Hariram and OSD to the Chief Minister Sridhar Deshpande participated in the video conference from Telangana.

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