Singur project farmers face another crop holiday as repairs remain incomplete

Incomplete repair works at the Singur Multi Purpose Project may force another crop holiday for farmers as the irrigation department plans to reserve water only for drinking purposes, leaving 40,000 acres of ayacut without irrigation during the upcoming agricultural seasons.

Sangareddy: The Singur Multi Purpose Project ayacut farmers are staring at another crop holiday as the repair works on the dam remain incomplete. The irrigation department took up repair works on the bund’s revetment and crest gates following a warning from the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA), which inspected the project in March 2025.

The irrigation authorities had emptied the project in a phased manner until December last year and took up the works with an outlay of Rs 22 crore. Though Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy directed the contractor and irrigation officials to complete the works by the beginning of the 2026 vanakalam season, a majority of the works remain incomplete.

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The contractor has failed to complete even 50 per cent of the works. There were allegations that the contractor could not complete the works due to a delay in the release of funds. As the water storage in the project came down below 5 TMCft in the first week of June, the HMWSSB took up emergency pumping to meet the drinking water needs of Hyderabad. The existing water will be sufficient only till July. Sources in the irrigation department said that the Irrigation Minister would shortly hold a review meeting on the progress of the repair works and that the meeting would take a call on the amount of water to be stored in the project for the season.

The sources further said that the irrigation department would keep 15 TMCft of water against the full capacity of 29.91 TMCft during the southwest monsoon. The water would be used only for drinking water needs. There would be no irrigation water supply for the 40,000 acres of ayacut during the vanakalam and yasangi seasons. The excess water received from upstream Maharashtra and Karnataka would be let down to Nizam Sagar located downstream. Since the IMD has predicted less rainfall due to El Nino, former Andole MLA Chanti Kranthi Kiran demanded that the government make arrangements to release irrigation water for at least the vanakalam season and help the farmers tackle the situation.