Musi River rejuvenation project set to gain pace: Harish Rao

Hyderabad:  The Musi River rejuvenation and beautification project is all set to gain pace with Finance Minister T Harish Rao announcing that the works would commence soon. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has already started working on it and a detailed project report was prepared, the Minister said, adding that Musi will be filled with […]

Hyderabad:  The Musi River rejuvenation and beautification project is all set to gain pace with Finance Minister T Harish Rao announcing that the works would commence soon.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has already started working on it and a detailed project report was prepared, the Minister said, adding that Musi will be filled with Godavari water to enable children to play in it.

Harish Rao was speaking at the concluding ceremony of national convention on rivers here on Sunday. The convention was organized by the Indian Peninsular River Basin Council and Indian Himalayan River Basin Council. The main theme of the convention was rejuvenation of rivers and restoration of tanks. “The Chief Minister is working on the same agenda and has accorded priority for the irrigation sector after the State formation,” the Minister said, adding that more Sewerage Treatment Plants (STPs) will also come up at the river.

He pointed out that Telangana was blessed with a chain of tank systems but after the princely State of Hyderabad was merged with Andhra Pradesh in 1956, these tanks, which were supposed to meet the requirements of 25 lakh acres of agriculture land, were completely neglected. “To restore the tanks, the Chief Minister started Mission Kakatiya in 2017,” he said.

“We took up Mission Kakatiya as a movement involving people especially farmers in villages and desiltation works were carried out,” Harish Rao said. After Mission Kakatiya, there were no breaches to water bodies due to heavy rains during monsoon, and groundwater levels had improved considerably. This also resulted in increase in agricultural production. Every drop of water was saved with the help of Mission Kakatiya. In addition, construction of as many as 4,000 check dams at a cost of over Rs.6,000 crore was on, he said.

The State government took up Mission Kakatiya to protect water bodies that will continue to serve the future generations. The initiative also helped in preventing encroachments, Harish Rao said.

The State government constructed five barrages on Godavari River with a total capacity of 140 TMC covering over 300 km. “We successfully completed the barrages under the able leadership of the Chandrashekhar Rao,” he said, adding that the Chief Minister was implementing the same concept of Waterman of India Rajendra Singh and it started yielding results as well.