Mission Kakatiya successful; Centre plans to replicate it across the nation: Harish

Hyderabad: Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao today informed the Central team that the flagship Mission Kakatiya program was a big success with active participation of public, leaders and employees.
Harish Rao held an interactive meeting with the Central team officials, who are on a two-day State visit to study the Lakes Restoration Program. Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharathi has sent the team to Telangana to study and plan to replicate it in other States to push minor irrigation. “We are implementing the lakes restoration program in a transparent way avoiding corruption and irregularities as details of works, bills payment, tenders and others are made online.
Before launching the program, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had a long exercise and held brainstorming sessions with people and came out with a plan to revive all the 46,000 lakes to help revive rural economy, Harish said. The program was completed in two phases and the third phase was started on a mission mode and soil test followed by shifting of de-silted soil to the fields yielding improved agriculture production.
Besides some rich people, employees, NRIs and a few journalists adopted the lakes in their villages and developing them, he said attributing the success to Irrigation officials, who are working for 16 to 18 hours a day. The Central team appreciated the commitment of the minister to involve people in the lakes revival program and Mission Kakatiya has become a role model for India.
CWC Chief Engineer CKL Das said with Mission Kakatiya, Telangana has linked up with India. “Uma Bharathi sent us to study and replicate the scheme in entire nation”, he said. Das also said strengthening of lakes is meant to revive rural economy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words of “Sab Ka Vikas” program roots can be found in Telangana, he noted. He opined that lakes revival program, which makes ample use of every drop to prevent waters going waste into sea, should be implemented in drought affected States like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and others. Media which used to give wide publicity to negative stories should highlight lakes revival program in a big way, he said.
Bhopal CWC Chief Engineer S K Haldar said based on experiences and impact of the scheme, a vision document will be prepared and the Centre has to take a policy decision to replicate it across the nation. Special Chief Secretary S K Joshi, Irrigation secretary Vikas Raj, OSD Sridhar Deshpande and others were present. (NSS)