Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has instructed irrigation minister T. Harish Rao to stay put and ensure all pending irrigation projects in the erstwhile Mahbubnagar district are completed before July so that 8 lakh acres are brought under irrigation.
Mr Harish Rao had stayed in the erstwhile Mahbubnagar district, now split into four districts, for three days last week and will go again next week.
“In a span of every 15 days, I will stay there for three days and take up field surveys and review meetings at various places on the canals with officials and contractors. I will be fixing weekly targets. We will achieve the 8 lakh acre irrigation target by July,” Mr Harish Rao told DC.
The CM has fixed four lakh acres under Kalwakurthy, two lakh acres each from Bheema and Nettempadu and 50,000 acres under Koilasagar project as the target.
Last week, Mr Harish Rao had covered 250 km along the canal bunds and distributaries of all the four projects spread in four districts — Mahbubnagar, Gadwal, Wanaparthy and Nagar Kurnool in the mornings, and held review meetings with various agencies and officials till midnight.
He sought cooperation of all local legislators and officials to complete the work on a war footing and get them ready to receive water from both Jurala and Srisailam from the very first inflows in the coming monsoon.
However, bottlenecks like acquisition of about 1,100 acres under these projects remain. For this, Mr Harish Rao has suggested convincing farmers to give up the land and follow the due procedure for providing compensation after a few days.
He has set officials targets of 15 days in his first trip and told them he would be returning for a three day-trip during which he would review implementation of the targets. Erstwhile Mahbubnagar district is the entry point for River Krishna from Karnataka.
Though the river winds its way through the district for over 150 km before reaching Srisailam dam, construction of major irrigation projects in the district has been neglected all these years.
“We have provided irrigation for the first time to a number of new areas in Kalwakurthy and Nettempadu. We will extend it to new areas. Providing irrigation to 8 lakh acres under four projects will boost agriculture and irrigation-related activities in the backward district,” Mr Harish Rao said.
He said that the government should get the canal structure ready to utilise it well before the first inflows in Krishna, expected sometime in July.
