Chairman of the Centre’s Task Force on Interlinking of Rivers and adviser to the Union Ministry of Water Resources (Jal Shakti) Sriram Vedire, on Thursday, said that the Central Water Commission (CWC) did not approve the designs and investment clearances for the Kaleshwaram project but only the hydrology (water availability) and interstate aspects (inter-state issues).
At a press conference, where he made a power point presentation on the irrigation projects in TS and AP and river water sharing disputes, he said that when there is a Central Design Organisation (CDO) in any State, CWC will not look into the designs. The CDO of Irrigation department of Telangana has prepared the designs of Kaleshwaram Project and it is responsible for the designs and not CWC.
The investment clearance was also not given by CWC since the State did not answer to the queries raised, he said, and accused the BRS government of taking up the “3 tmc” component for the project as ‘meaningless’.
The KLIP was planned to lift 2 tmc per day for 96 days to utilise about 195 tmc of water and irrigate about 18.25 lakh acres of the new command area. The BRS Government had mentioned that they would want to lift 3 tmc per day for 65 days to lift the same 195 tmc of water.
Thus, there is no additional water storage or any additional command area added with this 3rd tmc component, but the cost has been increased by another ₹30,000 crore, he explained.
The CWC had also denied approval to “3rd tmc” component of the project, he affirmed and this was also notified by the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) in 2021 after doing an internal exercise of calculating power and water charges, he said.
Mr. Sriram said that the original location of this project before ‘re-engineering’ was Tummadihatti on River Pranahita but it was moved to Medigadda by BRS Government. One of the main reasons was that there is only 67 tmc available at Tummadihatti and not 165 tmc, as calculated by CWC.
But this is “not true” as the CWC had always mentioned that there is 165 tmc water at Tummadihatti. It would have been a good project with utilisation of about 165 tmc with a cost of about ₹40,000 crore.
Moving to Medigadda location has made the project cost go up by three times that is up to ₹1.2 lakh crore with mostly lift cost with annual power cost of ₹10,500 crore, he added.
