Telangana: Crops under Tapaspally reservoir wither as water level touches dead storage

With the Congress government failing to pump in water, farmers were staring at the biggest loss of their lives as crops dried up

Siddipet: With water levels receding drastically in the Tapaspally reservoir, which was built as part of the Devadula Lift Irrigation project in Komuravelly mandal, Yasangi crops have started withering in Komuravelly, Dhoolmitta, Cheriyal, Kondapak, and Maddur mandals and also in Bachannapet mandal of the neighbouring Jangaon district.

The issue was so intense that even Congress MP Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy, who examined the reservoir and the agriculture fields a week ago, said farmers were suffering as the water level had touched dead storage in Tapaspally. Though the MP assured that he would talk to officials to fill the reservoir, nothing had been done so far.

The project was taken up to supply irrigation water to 82,000 acres. The previous BRS government had managed to provide irrigation water up to 60,000 acres as the digging of some canals was pending.

Since the Mallanna Sagar reservoir is located close to Tapaspally, the then Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had decided to impound Tapaspally with Kaleshwaram water by digging a link canal to stabilise the ayacut in addition to taking the total ayacut to 1.30 lakh acres.

The BRS government had granted Rs 388 crore to complete the project and 40 per cent of the work on these link canals was completed.

However, the ruling Congress party was neither able to pump in water through Devadula nor complete the link canal from Mallanna Sagar. The farmers in these mandals were staring at the biggest loss of their lives as their crops started withering.

While some farmers were getting borewells drilled, some others were desilting abandoned open wells to save their crops at the fag end of the Yasangi season. The farmers were forced to shell out huge amounts to save the crops.

Speaking to Telangana Today, Pachimadla Swamy, a resident of Rasulabad in Komuravelly, said farmers had a harrowing time as they were putting all-out efforts to save the drying crops. Despite meeting officials and elected representatives multiple times, they could not lift the water to Tapaspally, he said.

Ravindar, another farmer from Ramsagar village, said farmers would be unable to get their investments back as paddy crops had started drying up everywhere.

Jangaon MLA Palla Rajeshwar Reddy accused the Congress government of ignoring the issues of farmers.

The BRS MLA said they had supplied irrigation water to over 68,000 acres when Chandrashekhar Rao was at the helm of affairs.