The Telangana government has set in motion its plans to change the location of the barrage of Pranahitha project, initially planned across Pranahitha river at Thummidi-Hatti in Adilabad district, by taking up the matter with Maharashtra government for the first time on Friday.
It was discussed at length at the coordination committee meeting of officials of the two States, held here on Friday, along with the aspects pertaining to Kaleshwaram project, as agreed by the Chief Ministers of the two States in August 2016. The plans of Pranahitha barrage location change were taken up with Maharashtra following the feasibility report given by the Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS) Limited recently.
The meeting was attended by district collectors Kunal Khemnar (Chandrapur), Shekhar Singh (Gadchiroli), Chief Engineer of Water Resources (Nagpur) R.M. Chauhan and other officials from Maharashtra and Engineer-in-Chief (Kaleshwaram) B. Hariram, chief engineers N. Venkateshwarlu (Kaleshwaram), K. Bhagwanth Rao (Adilabad), T. Srinivas (Central Designs Organisation) and others from Telangana.
Rethink of project
It is yet another step to alter the design of Pranahitha project, which has already been changed as part of the redesigning of Pranahitha-Chevella lift irrigation project, originally conceived in 2007, taken up by Telangana government. After redesigning, the Pranahitha component of the original project was planned with a barrage at Tummidi-Hatti with full reservoir level of 148 meters against the initial 152 meters.
“The State government was forced to rethink again as the cost of over 3 km long barrage at Tummidi-Hatti at ₹2,700 was too high for utilisation of only 20 tmc ft water for irrigating 2 lakh acres ayacut in Adilabad. Accordingly, alternative possibilities were explored and a location about 20 km upstream of Tummidi-Hatti across Wardha river was zeroed-in after finding the availability of water there,” a senior official of the Irrigation Department explained. Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao stated recently that change of the Pranahitha barrage location was planned as a barrage with the required utility could be constructed only with ₹800 crore across Wardha river.
“The Maharashtra officials said they will examine the proposal after the detailed project report on the new location is submitted and we assured them that the DPR would be given to them as soon as it is ready,” sources who participated in the meeting told The Hindu . On Kaleshwaram, the Maharashtra officials were understood to have asked for a copy of the DPR and designs to cross-check whether work in progress, particularly Medigadda barrage, was being carried out as per the agreement or not. Telangana officials told them that a copy of the DPR has been already submitted and they had no reservations over giving another copy.
The Maharashtra officials also wanted Telangana government to complete the land acquisition on their side. “About 50 acres out of a total of 436 acres is yet to be acquired in Maharashtra and we assured to complete it soon,” sources said adding that they also wanted the construction of flood banks on their side in coordination with their officials.
