Nearly 259 TMCft Water Required for Kharif Crops in Telangana: Report
Of the total water requirement of 258.93 tmc ft, 196.41 tmc ft of water is to be used by projects in the Krishna river basin while 62.52 tmc ft of water will come from projects in the Godavari basin.
Hyderabad:Telangana will require 258.93 tmc ft of water to provide irrigation – for both irrigated-dry and wet – crops covering 24,06,034 acres this Vanakalam (Kharif) crop season, the state-level committee for integrated water planning and management (Swicam) has determined.
It determined that only 44,570 acres can be irrigated using 15.18 tmc ft of water from the Kaleshwaram project. Just how much the Kaleshwaram project can irrigate has been a huge bone of contention between the Congress and the BRS. While the BRS claims that the project can irrigate 37 lakh acres a year, the Congress has been maintaining that this was a hugely inflated figure. Friday’s Swicam decision indicated that the actual acreage served by the project is far less than the BRS claims.
Of the area that the committee determined can be irrigated this Kharif season, 8,87,293 acres are expected to grow irrigated dry crops, while 15,18,741 acres will have ‘wet’ crops that require sustained bouts of irrigation.
Of the total water requirement of 258.93 tmc ft, 196.41 tmc ft of water is to be used by projects in the Krishna river basin while 62.52 tmc ft of water will come from projects in the Godavari basin.
The project in Godavari basin to irrigate the maximum acreage – 2,07,211 acres – will be the J. Chokka Rao Devadula lift irrigation scheme in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district. In the Krishna basin, the Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy project is expected to be the top irrigation provider covering 3,00,685 acres this Kharif season.
