The State government has broadly decided to release water for rabi crop from the left canal of Nagarjunasagar from December 10 to meet the requirements for farmers in Nalgonda and Khammam.
However, the action plan on releases will be announced at a crucial meeting of the farmers of the ayacut, public representatives, MLAs and MPs at Miryalguda on Saturday, it was decided at a high level meeting today at Assembly under the chairmanship of Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao.
It was attended by MPs and MLAs of the two districts and Roads and Buildings Minister T. Nageswara Rao.
A release said Mr. Harish Rao told the meeting that 36 tmc ft water was released from left canal of Nagarjunasagar for rabi last year. This year, the availability was 40 tmc ft. He explained that the government followed `on-and-off’ system of water release last year in a bid to conserve water which gave good results and helped irrigate 10,639 acres per one tmc ft water.
The overall irrigated area in rabi of 2016-17 was 3.83 lakh acres while it was only 2.76 lakh acres from 51.04 tmc ft in 2014-15. The irrigation potential this year by the new system was 4.50 lakh acres from 40 tmc ft. Irrigated dry crops should be promoted in another two lakh acres.The Minister asked the leaders to educate tail-end farmers against going for paddy crop as water might not reach their fields. The engineers of Irrigation Department should walk along the canals to ensure proper distribution of water through the network of canals, distributaries and minors.
The meeting was attended by Principal Secretary of Irrigation S.K. Joshi, Engineer-in-Chief C. Muralidhar Rao and Nagarjunasagar chief engineer S. Sunil.
