Hyderabad: Irrigation minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Thursday announced a clear roadmap to fast-track all pending irrigation projects in the undivided Mahabubnagar district to ensure their completion as per a defined timeline. He said the Palamuru-Rangareddy lift irrigation scheme will be completed by Dec 2027, ending years of delay and injustice to farmers under the previous regime.
The minister, along with excise minister Jupally Krishna Rao, Telangana Planning Board vice chairman G Chinna Reddy, and others, inspected the major irrigation sites across Nagarkurnool and Wanaparthy districts on Thursday. After visiting various components of the project, the minister announced that a timeline was fixed to complete the works necessary to fill 50 TMC of water in Narlapur, Yedula, Vattem, and Karivena reservoirs. Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the Udandapur reservoir would be filled by March 2026. He also directed that the Kalwakurthy, Nettempadu, Bheema, and Koilsagar projects must be fully completed by March 2026.
The minister assured that two non-functional motors at Lift-I of the Kalwakurthy lift irrigation scheme would be repaired and made operational within the next two to three months. He instructed irrigation officials to prepare a comprehensive list of pending land acquisition cases and vendor-related packages to resolve all bottlenecks in the implementation of these schemes.
Uttam Kumar Reddy criticised the previous BRS govt for compromising the state’s irrigation interests. “KCR mortgaged the interests of farmers in Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda, and Khammam. Despite the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal allocating 811 TMC to undivided Andhra Pradesh, the then CM and irrigation minister asked for only 299 TMC for Telangana, allowing Andhra Pradesh to claim 511 TMC,” he said. “This injustice continued from 2015 to 2023,” he added.
He reiterated that completing irrigation projects in the Palamuru region was a top priority for the Congress govt and assured that long-pending schemes would finally be delivered to benefit lakhs of farmers in south Telangana.
