Kaleshwaram continues to help: Water released from Mallanna Sagar

Harish Rao on Tuesday had demanded the government to release water from Mallanna Sagar within 24 hours, failing which people in the command area of the project would lift the gates of the project on their own.

Hyderabad: The Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) has one more victory to its credit in its fight for water under the multi-stage Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project. Close on the heels of the ultimatum issued by BRS leader and Siddipet MLA T Harish Rao, Irrigation officials on Tuesday released 800 cusecs of water from Mallanna Sagar to its ayacut. The emergency release of water was intended reach out to the villages with dried up sources.

Harish Rao on Tuesday had demanded the government to release water from Mallanna Sagar within 24 hours, failing which people in the command area of the project would lift the gates of the project on their own. Mallanna Sagar, which is viewed as the mother of all reservoirs in the Kaleshwaram project, is the biggest artificial reservoir in the country and expected to irrigate 11 lakh acres of land. But the crops raised under the project were on the verge of withering with water not being released.

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The project has a gross storage capacity of 50 tmc. In all, eight heavy motors were installed at the Thukapur pump house in Thokkuta Mandal in Siddipet district for lifting water into the project. Nearly 62 per cent of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project ayacut is encompassed by the Mallanna Sagar reservoir.

Earlier, on Sunday, in view of the mounting pressure from people in the water-starved villages, the State government had pumped water drawn from the Yellampalli reservoir to the SRSP flood flow canal giving about 0.1 tmc of water to quench the thirst of people in a cluster of villages in erstwhile Karimnagar district.

The government also started drawing 1000 cusecs of water from the Nagarjuna Sagar to meet the drinking water needs in the command of the Nagarjuna Sagar left canal.