Medigadda repairs - Reality check turmps political attacks
Medigadda emerges as key to reviving Kaleshwaram project amid water availability concerns and political debate
Hyderabad: The apparent sudden revival of interest to rehabilitate the Kaleshwaram project barrages at Medigadda, Sundilla and Annaram may have as much to do with the realisation that tens of thousands of crores of rupees spent on the project are lying waste since October 2023, when the problems at the barrages came to light, as it has to do with the fact that the Medigadda barrage is still the best bet for making the most of Godavari water for the rest of Telangana.
It may be recalled that condition of the barrages faced a torrent of political criticism from the Congress both in the run-up to the last Assembly elections, and after the formation of government: The party used the sinking of one of the blocks at Medigadda, and leaks at Sundilla and Annaram, to beat the BRS with.
These failures of the barrages were also the prompt for the Congress government to revive the Dr B.R. Ambedkar Pranahita-Chevella project with plans to build a new barrage on the the Pranahita river at Tummidihatti and bring water from there to Sundilla barrage – upstream of Medigadda – and use the rest of the existing Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme (KLIS) system – for pumping water from Godavari to other parts of the state.
Sources said during the series of discussions in the government on the way forward – an exercise that picked up pace over the past month after the NDSA practically slammed the government for going slow on the repairs – one of the points that came up was the availability of water at Tummidihatti on the Pranahita, and at Medigadda that lies well after the confluence of Pranahita and Godavari rivers.
While the government and the Opposition differ on how much water is available at each of these points during a year, depending on who talks about it, the average annual yield from Pranahita at Tummidihatti is around 165 tmc ft, while at Medigadda it hovers around 280 tmc ft.
“Irrespective of the contested claims, Medigadda has more water available and this fact alone means Medigadda barrage needs to be repaired and brought back into use,” a source familiar with the series of discussions leading up to this Sunday’s announcement of an action plan to rehabilitate the barrages, said.
“The fact is that there is no other way to get so much water for Telangana from a single source as can be done from Medigadda,” the source said. The barrage at Tummidihatti – for which survey work is going on - once completed, can store about 1.84 tmc ft of water which would be pumped in a two-stage lift scheme and then flow by gravity into Sundilla barrage.
Medigadda on the other hand, can store up to 16 tmc ft of water if required, and for short durations, without compromising the structural integrity of the barrage, something that was ignored during the BRS government which allowed full storage at the location.
This realisation that Medigadda can be a better source, with or without a barrage at Tummidihatti, resulted in the setting up a committee of officials to oversee the work ahead, and next week, the team is expected to visit Delhi to brief NDSA on the plans to speed up the work.
Incidentally, the BRS had been maintaining for long that Medigadda can be, and must be repaired and it was not as difficult a task as the government was making it out to be. The party leaders had repeatedly said that Medigadda was used as an excuse for political attacks on it, and the decision now to take up repairs, appears to give credence to the BRS’ claims.
