Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has directed irrigation engineers to work out a strategy to fill chain-link tanks with rainwater, water from major and medium irrigation projects and regenerated water by preparing village-wise irrigation maps within two months.
At a meeting on linking chain-link tanks with major and medium irrigation projects held here on Saturday, the Chief Minister gave several suggestions on irrigating as much land as possible in the State with the help of minor irrigation tanks. Irrigation department officials made a PowerPoint presentation on mapping chain-link tanks done by the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
He said Telangana had thousands of minor irrigation tanks constructed from the Kakatiya era and, recognising their potential, the Bachawat Tribunal had allocated 265 tmc ft water for them in 1974 itself. To undo the neglect of tanks done during the combined Andhra Pradesh rule, the Telangana government had taken up the Mission Kakatiya programme to revive them, he said at the meeting attended by Deputy Chief Ministers K. Srihari and Md. Mahamood Ali, Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao, MPs K. Keshava Rao and B. Vinod Kumar, several legislators and officials.
Stating that a large number of tanks were already revived under Mission Kakatiya programme, the Chief Minister said every drop in the projects being constructed with huge money and energy should be utilised, particularly through chain-link tanks. Each chain of tanks would have tanks from 20 to 70 and by filling the first tank with project water, it could be taken to the last tanks in the link without much effort, he said.
Asking the engineers to get all feeder channels and crop channels of every tank ready, the Chief Minister said every mandal-level Assistant Engineer should have maps of all tank systems, including the details of their feeding from specific canal. He wanted the engineers to prepare report on utilising water from check-dams too.
Underlining the need to complete linking of all tanks with projects in the State by next June, he said Kaleshwaram project would be ready to function with in full capacity by then. He also wanted the officials and elected representatives to create awareness among people, particularly the farming community, on maintaining the tanks themselves as was the practice in the past.
He recollected that de-silting of tanks, taking the silt to their fields, carrying out repairs on tank bunds, sluices and crop channels was done by beneficiaries in the command area (ayacut) in the past. A meeting would be conducted soon with irrigation engineers for creating awareness on linking tanks with projects.
