Sriram Sagar Project water to be released to ayacut by July 25

Water releases to main canals of the Sriram Sagar Project will be scheduled by reviewing the situation on July 21

Hyderabad: Much to the relief of farmers, the Sriram Sagar Project (SRSP) water will be released to the ayacut by July 25. Irrigation authorities are gearing up for the occasion. Timely releases were made possible with the supplementations received from the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS).

Water releases to main canals of the project will be scheduled by reviewing the situation on July 21. The opinion of MLAs, MPs and other elected representatives is also being taken. The elected representatives from the command area of the project are under pressure from farmers for water. They have been making representations seeking water release. Farmers are ready with the seed-beds in some of the districts.

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The project authorities had reportedly received green signal for going ahead with the water releases by assessing the district wise and constituency wise requirement. The project has received over 12.5 TMC of water during the last two weeks from both the upstream sources and the downstream Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme.

The live storage of the project was built up to the level of 32 TMC as against the gross storage capacity of 90.31 TMC. Water being pumped into the project from the drawls of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme helped in adding some four TMC to its live storage of the project.

The inflows to the SRSP from the catchment are also on the rise. The average inflows into the project during the last 24 hours were in the order of 16000 cusecs. Inflows from all sources were adding to its storage, which was only 20 TMC a week ago, by one TMC to 1.5 TMC a day, thanks to rains received of late in the catchment.

Other projects upstream including Jaikwadi also started receiving inflows. The SRSP will support irrigation to an ayacut of 9.11 lakh acres under its Kakatiya canal, 35000 acres under Saraswati canal and 22000 acres under Lakshmi canal. Farm activity is in progress at a brisk pace in the ayacut. Irrigation authorities said the pumping of water to SRSP from the Kaleshwaram project would continue to build adequate levels of storage.

Initially, the irrigation authorities had planned to lift some 20 TMC water from Kaleshwaram. Chief Engineer Sudhakar Reddy said the situation started easing up following widespread rains. By all means the project water would be released to the canal system in a week, he added.