Hyderabad: Expressing happiness over the Central Government’s statement that it will give top priority to the Irrigation Projects in the country, Telangana State Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao has said that the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has taken up redesign of projects in the state to provide water to one crore acres keeping severe drought conditions in the state in view. On Wednesday, Harish Rao has appealed to the Centre once again to provide a national status to the Kaleswaram Project, which was very important and provides irrigation water to all north Telangana districts.
Harish said that the then Central government provided national status to the Polavaram project, which was located in Andhra Pradesh state, in the Andhra Pradesh Re-organisation Act. But the same government failed to provide such facility to the newly formed Telangana state showing reason that there were inter-state disputes regarding Telangana projects. After assuming the office, KCR resolved inter-state disputes in regard to irrigation projects. The Telangana government entered into an agreement with the Maharashtra government on five projects including Kaleswaram project. In the process, the Telangana government urging the Centre to provide national status to the Kaleswaram project, Harish said. He said that KCR too addressed a letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of the Telangana government urging the centre to provide national status to Kaleswaram project. “I too urged the Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharathi to confer national status to the Kaleswaram project by meeting her personally”, he said.
Harish demanded the Centre to provide national status to the Kaleswaram project by considering it as an urgent case and urged the Centre to allot huge funds to the Mission Kakatiya, which was aimed at revival of tanks. Thanking the Maharshtra Chief Minister Padnavis for giving green nod to the projects to be constructed on Godavari, Pranahitha and Penganga rivers, Harish assured the farmers of the Telangana that the TRS government will complete the projects speedily and provide water to them. (NSS)