The Maharashtra government on Tuesday opened all the 14 gates of the controversial Babli project located on Godavari river in Dharmabad taluk of Nanded district as per the directions of the Supreme Court. This will ensure at least 0.7 tmc of the 0.8 tmc water stored in the reservoir reaches the SRSP reservoir in Nizamabad district of Telangana State.
On the request of Maharashtra government, the Supreme Court had issued directions in February last year to keep the gates open between July 1 and October 28 to ensure monsoon inflows reach the major irrigation dam of SRSP located about 80 km downstream. The gates will therefore remain closed between October 29 and June 30 which constitutes the non-rainy season.
According to SRSP Executive Engineer (EE) B. Rama Rao, the gates were opened in the presence of Nanded Irrigation EE S.S. Awasthi and Central Water Commission (CWC) EE B. Srinivas. He said the inflows into the SRSP will have the current reservoir level of 1067.5 ft raised to 1067.9 ft.
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It may be recalled that the Babli project was in the thick of a controversy for over a decade, eight years of which saw a legal battle, as the then Andhra Pradesh government had expected the construction of the barrage across Godavari could dry up inflows into SRSP. The control over flow of Godavari would result in depriving irrigation water to the ayacut of over 7 lakh acres spread in the North Telangana districts of Nizamabad, Adilabad, Karimnagar and Warangal, the AP government had contended.
It was in July, 2010, that a delegation of all political parties headed by Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu tried to reach Babli project site to verify the facts. The MPs, MLAs and other leaders were however, denied permission to visit the place and were unceremoniously bundled back to Hyderabad after an eventful week in Dharmabad.