The Congress party has picked holes in Telangana Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao’s claim on the Palamuru-Rangareddy and the Dindi Lift Irrigation Schemes.
Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president and official spokesperson N. Tulasi Reddy said that Mr. Harish Rao’s claim that the two Lift schemes were not new was totally false. He said that the Palamuru-Rangareddy and Dindi Lift Irrigation Schemes were new and had nothing to do with the old projects approved in the combined Andhra Pradesh referred to by Mr. Harish Rao.
The Irrigation & CAD Department order number 72 dated August 8, 2013 referred to a Palamuru Lift Irrigation Scheme to lift water from the foreshore of the Jurala Project, but the new Rs. 35,200-crore lift scheme was from the foreshore of the Srisailam Project. While the earlier G.O. envisioned a meagre Rs. 6.91 crore for the project, the estimation for the new one was five times that, he pointed out.
Similarly, G.O. number 159 dated July 7, 2007 granted Rs 1.30 crore for a survey for a lift from Srisailam Left Bank Canal tunnel to the Dindi reservoir, but the new Dindi Project according to G.O. number 107 dated June 11, 2015, was for Rs. 6,190 crore lift irrigation project to draw water from the foreshore of the Srisailam reservoir.
He said Telangana has seven old projects, namely Jurala, Bhima, Nettempadu, Koil Sagar, Kaluvakurthy, Srisailam Left Bank Canal and Nagarjuna Sagar Left Bank Canal and nobody had any objection to their redesign. But Palamuru-Rangareddy and Dindi were brand new, he said.
