Ensconced between two streams, Peda Vagu and Kappala Vagu, Mothe village in Velpur mandal, adopted by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is facing severe water crisis.
Ironically, the mandal headquarters town, hardly a few kilometres away is flush with water thanks to Gutpa and Nawab Cheruvu LI schemes while Mothe is experiencing acute shortage of water both for drinking and irrigation purposes.
Inhabited by about 7,000 people, the village was adopted by the Chief Minister for its overall development as villagers of Mothe had unanimously passed a resolution extending full support to his Telangana agitation immediately after he floated the TRS in 2001. Then Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao went to the village and took a little quantity of soil in a bundle with an oath that he would come back to the village to open it only when Telangana State was achieved. He kept the cloth bundle in Jaladrusyam in Hyderabad.
Thereafter, he visited the village soon after Telangana’s formation in 2014 and untied the bundle . In 2015, when he visited the village again, he made certain promises such as supply of Godavari water, 220 double bedroom houses for the poor, construction of new buildings for gram panchayat and school, CC roads and drains, a power transformer and drip irrigation system to all farmers on 100 per cent subsidy.
All works, except Godavari water and double bedroom housing are underway.
The Chief Minister sanctioned ₹ 2 crore for drains and roads, ₹ 80 lakh for GP building, ₹ 25 lakh for school and ₹ 8 crore for drip systems to all farmers. A transformer was also erected, according to Bangla Narsa Reddy, former president, primary agriculture cooperative society.
The village has one big and four small tanks besides six borewells and one open well for drinking water supply. Farmers have 840 agriculture borewells. Surprisingly, most of them have gone bone dry and groundwater level drastically depleted much before the onset of summer. Its two streams dried up long back.
Mission Bhagiratha vice-chairman V. Prashanth Reddy, whose Balkonda constituency the village is part of, says that within Godavari water would be supplied to Mothe for drinking purpose in 15 days.
“Trial run is on and water connections to households have been given. It will be the first village to have the Godavari water under the Mission Bhagiratha scheme,” he said.
As for irrigation, three permanent sources were identified. Two check-dams, one on Peda Vagu with ₹5 crore and another on Kappalavagu with ₹2 crore were already built to recharge ground water.
As part of the second solution, Godavari water would be diverted to a tank in Pachalanadikudi and thereby transferred to Peda Cheruvu in Mothe for which ₹3 crore was sanctioned. Third and permanent solution is Pranahitha-Chevella Package 21 and works would start within a month or so, he said.
