Telangana Govt issues Expression of Interest calling for Medigadda rehabilitation designs

The Telangana government has issued an EOI for the rehabilitation of Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla barrages under KLIP, two years after the Medigadda piers sagged. Farmers remain sceptical, citing delays, crop losses, and water scarcity amid political concerns ahead of local body polls.

Hyderabad: The State government, which has been treating the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) like a worthless burden for the past two years, has finally issued an Expression of Interest (EOI) for designs to rehabilitate the Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages. This eleventh-hour call for bids, due October 15, is widely viewed as tokenism, coming almost two years after the Medigadda piers sagged in October 2023.

The project’s vast network of canals and barrage pumps, left unused, have deteriorated into dusty relics over the past four crop seasons. Farmers are fuming all over the ayacut area as they were left to experience the worst from truncated operations of the project. They watched helplessly as groundwater tables plummeted and crops impacted.

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“We have begged for water from Pranahita to Godavari, but the government’s probes and politics have drowned our hopes,” Madikanti Ramulu, a distraught ryot from Dornakal in Mahabubabad district, said.
The National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) submitted its final report in February this year, recommending rehabilitation of the Medigadda barrage. Yet, the State government took months to act on these findings and recommendations. Under Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, the project continues to languish in limbo, starved of funds. Critics slam this delay as deliberate sabotage, a vendetta against a BRS legacy. The EoI is seen as a gesture to placate the angry farmers ahead of the local body polls, as they were left high and dry for nearly two years under the project’s multiple reservoirs.
They are still sceptical of the government move.

“We hope the government would not use the EoI merely to prolong our agony, ” said Ramulu.

The EoI announced by the Irrigation & Command Area Development (CAD) Department’s Central Designs Organisation (CDO) calls for proposals to be submitted by October 15, with designs based on investigations directed by the NDSA committee. It requires sealed bids superscribing the project details to be delivered to the CDO office at Jalasoudha by 3 pm on the deadline. The proposal bids will be opened as scheduled at 5 pm the same day in the presence of Chief Engineer, CDO.
Further details are available on the department’s website.