Hyderabad, January 05: Clearing the decks for the Indirasagar irrigation project (Polavaram) to attain the national project status, the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of Central Water Commission (CWC) on Tuesday issued clearance for the muchawaited multipurpose project with the revised project cost of about Rs 17,000 crore.
The TAC, which met in New Delhi today, sought several clarifications from the state’s irrigation department which gave satisfactory answers to the committee members. Irrigation officials assured a minimum budgetary allocation of Rs 2,500 crore every year for the project which is part of the Jalayagnam programme.
The state government will now have to obtain two more clearances pertaining to Expenditure and Finance Committee, and Investment for commencement of work on the project.
TAC’s clearance has been a major obstacle to the state government to obtaining the national project status for Polavaram which has been conceived as a multipurpose project to provide irrigation facility to 7.21 lakh acres, drinking water supply to towns and villages en route and generate hydro-electricity with an installed capacity of 960 MW.
Officials of the irrigation department had obtained consent for this project from the CWC in June 2007, and the Detailed Project Report (DPR) was submitted to the Centre in January 2008.
Later, the state also received all clearances including clearances from the TAC, the environmental and forest clearances.
However, the government had to approach the TAC for a fresh clearance after the project expenditure estimates were revised upwards from Rs 10,800 crore to Rs 17,000 crore.
Despite several pleas to the central government, the project attracted only assurances in return and the issue had been pending for long leading to doubts over commencement of the project.
Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has recently taken up the matter with Union minister for parliamentary affairs and water resources Pawan Kumar Bansal requesting him to expedite the clearance of the TAC for the project.
—Agencies