Telangana seeks justice for in-basin areas

Hyderabad: Telangana has requested Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) to look into the urgent needs of in-basin areas of the State and take initiative to undo the injustice meted out to those areas. It also urged shifting of Jurala project and its components from Schedule-2 to Schedule-3 of the gazette notification. In a letter to […]

Hyderabad: Telangana has requested Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) to look into the urgent needs of in-basin areas of the State and take initiative to undo the injustice meted out to those areas.

It also urged shifting of Jurala project and its components from Schedule-2 to Schedule-3 of the gazette notification. In a letter to the Board chairman, Irrigation and Command Area Development (CAD) Engineer-in-Chief (General) C Muralidhar said that in Schedule-1 and 2 of the notification of July 15, 2021, Nettempadu Lift Irrigation Scheme (NLIS) originating from Jurala project was shown as 15.2 NLIS: pump house two components and appurtenant works and 15.3 NLIS -additional 3.4 tmc: pump house and appurtenant works.

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In fact, NLIS was not enhanced to utilise additional 3.4 tmc from original scope of the project and 3.4 tmc water was earmarked by the Telangana government to commensurate with the ayacut envisaged by erstwhile Andhra Pradesh government.

The same fact was already clarified to KRMB several times. Hence, the component number 15.3 tmc may be deleted from the Schedule 1 and 2.
Further, Jurala project components were placed in the Schedule-2 of the notification. In fact, the project and all components related to it lie entirely within Telangana and serve only Telangana area without any common territory with AP.

Telemetry has already been implemented in all the outlets from this project. Hence, Jurala project components were not required to be kept under direct control of KRMB and this project may be excluded from Schedule-2 list and included in Schedule-3.

According to Muralidhar, due to prolonged struggle by farmers of Mahabubnagar and Rangareddy districts, Bhima Lift Irrigation Scheme was taken up with reallocation of 20 tmc dependable waters. This was only an eyewash as large areas on left side were still left out of irrigation facilities.
Right side of Jurala barrage was not given any reallocation. Though currently the BLIS source of water was from Krishna river, the name Bhima was given to the project because it serves the areas of earlier Bhima project.

The NLIS was to serve the areas on right side of Jurala barrage. From Jurala project, the diverting capacity was not more than 9,500 cusecs from its various canals and lift irrigation schemes, whereas the average inflows to this project was 44,000 cusecs being received during June and October for the period from 2008-2021 at this project.

Therefore, the abstractions from this project would not have any bearing on the downstream utilisations. Telangana was pleading for allocation of dependable waters to NLIS and surplus waters to Koilkonda Lift Irrigation Scheme and Jurala flood flow canal from Jurala barrage before the KWDT-II.

Even after implementing all the ongoing schemes in about 10 lakh acres in erstwhile Mahbubnagar district, it would still be not having any water for irrigation, he added.

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