The Irrigation Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, Eluru MP Maganti Babu and Chintalapudi MLA Chintamaneni Prabhakar along with A large number of farmers on Wednesday performed poojas at Pallerlamudi village in Krishna district, where Godavari waters entered Krishna District in the morning flowing through the Polavaram Right Main Canal from the Tatipudi Lift Irrigation Scheme.
However, there is a doubt among the farmers of Krishna and West Godavari Districts whether or not the first pump of PLIS will be installed on September 15 as the machinery shipped from China had not reached Gujarat port till Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, however the irrigation officials received communication from Gujarat saying that one motor and two pumps were unloaded this morning and they would be shipped by road either on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
Superintendent Engineer of Pattiseema Project Ramesh Babu told `The Hindu’ that it will take at least 36 hours for the machines to reach Pattisam location and another 48 hours were required for its installation and connection. “With all probabilities and if rain god supports us, we will have two pumps ready by September 15 morning,” he said.
The capacity of the pump is 354 cusecs and if the 4.71 MV motor runs for 24 hours 0.3 tmcft water will be pumped into the canal. “We want to fix 24 pumps to lift 8,500 cusecs of water by next February”, said Mr. Ramesh Babu.
However, the tail-end farmers in West Godavari and also some parts in Krishna District are expressing their strong resistance on releasing water through right canal as the land acquisition process by the Government is not completed and some of their lands are in court disputes. Some last-moment stay from the court can also be expected in this regard.
