Tuesday, Apr 21, 2026

Lifting A River: The Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme in Telangana

The untold story of one of the biggest mega-builds ever to be undertaken in India or the world

By Telangana Today

Updated On - 22 June 2021, 12:56 PM

Lifting A River: The Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme in Telangana

Telangana’s prestigious and multi staged Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) has got very great applauds from all the sections and regions. This renowned project was documented by popular science & technology channel Discovery Channel by the title “Lifting A River”, will be telecast on 25th of June, at 8 PM. Filmed for nearly 3 years, ‘Lifting A River’ captures every phase of the Kaleshwaram Project MEGA-BUILD: from the mammoth scale of construction to the intimate precision of science & engineering.

This documentary was done by made by award winning documentary filmmaker Kondapalli Rajendra Srivathsa of Pulse Media. His films shed light on fascinating worlds spanning science & technology, art & culture, social messaging & human interest stories. He is from Hyderabad, a Telugu spoken person, living in Delhi for past 30 years. He received many prestigious awards for his works. His films have been nominated for and received the Asian Television Award, Singapore (2010, 2012,), the Indian Telly Awards (2012, 2016), Indian Television Academy Award (2018).

Kaleshwaram Lift Irringation Project was Telangana Chief Minister Sri K. Chandrashekar Rao’s dream project, for which he made all efforts with his engineering and construction team a great success. This project is Pride of Telangana people. Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Limited (MEIL) with its world best engineering system has been involved in the Kaleshwaram Project construction.

Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project, gigantic multi staged project, is a unique very of its kind. This type of project was never built anywhere in the world. This project is unique because for this the path of Godavari was diverted. The speciality of project is water is lifted to upper areas with gigantic pumping machines at multilevel stages, at 600 meters above sea level.

The success of constructing was mainly because of CM KCR’s initiative and self interest for the service of Telangana people. In the process of project construction there was no land acquisition problem. Godavari water of such a large extent was stored into reservoirs and lifted with pumping and at the same time with available main drainage system connect to the already completed other reservoirs, canals and ponds for storage and supply. This resulted hugely reduction of cost of construction and did not become big burden on Telangana government.

In Kaleshwaram Project, MEIL constructed 15 gigantic pumping stations. At very short time for all the units MEIL installed total 104 international standard quality pumping machines. The project is so large that it has a total pumping capacity of 5159 MW, of which MEIL has set up 4439 MW pumping stations, which is not built anywhere in the world.

Under Package-8, at the Gayatri underground Pumping Station in, 7 units were commissioned to pump 2 TMCs of water per day. The capacity of each unit is 139 MW, which is massive and not found anywhere else in the world. This plant has a pumping capacity of 973 MW.

In Medigadda Lakshmi pumping station 17 machines have been set up, at Annaram (Saraswati) 12, 14 at Sundilla Parvati and at Gayatri Underground Pumping Center 7 machines are installed. 4 in Annapurna, 4 in Ranganayakasagar and another 2 unites in Akkaram and Markuklo pump house have been set up as part of the Kondapochamma package. Mallannasagar Reservoir, which is a part of Kaleswaram project, has a storage capacity of 52 TMC. 18 machines installed pumping station-8.