Hyderabad: Data from the Department of Economics and Statistics (DoES) has shown that only about 20 lakh acres of a total of 1.06 crore acres of arable land have irrigation support from the existing half a dozen major and about 30 minor and medium irrigation projects in the state.
Additionally, the data shows that nearly 84% of the total agricultural land depends on borewell irrigation with just about 10% of arable land irrigated by canals while four percent of land depends on tanks. The rest is rain-fed.
According to the DoES’ Socio-Economic Outlook 2016, the total geographical area of Telangana is 2.76 crore acres (112.08 lakh hectares) of which only 1.06 crore is under agriculture and 61.77 lakh acres under forest cover. While 34.59 lakh acres are currently categorized as fallow land, 22.23 lakh acres are being used for non-agriculture purposes in the state.
The plans for the Irrigation project by K Chandrasekhar Rao are opposed by the opposition leader Uttam Reddy. He alleged that the government will provide water to over one crore acres once the projects are completed. He called the statistic given by the ‘KCR government to be false’