Rain swells reservoirs

The level at Jurala in Mahabubnagar district kept rising steadily and stood at 317.35 metres against the full reservoir level of 318.51 metres.

Aided by copious rains in the last three days, reservoirs in Telangana in Krishna basin started receiving good inflows, but not so in the Godavari basin where the situation continued to be pathetic as Singur, Nizamsagar, Sriramsagar and Lower Manair Dam projects were still left high and dry.

The level at Jurala in Mahabubnagar district kept rising steadily and stood at 317.35 metres against the full reservoir level of 318.51 metres. The inflow was 10,000 cusecs. Downstream, Srisailam’s level touched 801.9 ft against the FRL of 885 ft at 6 p.m. on account of inflows from Sunkesula at Waddepalli in Mahabubnagar where authorities lifted 14 gates to a height of one metre to discharge up to 50,000 cusecs. However, the flow decreased by evening. About 25,000 cusecs was also discharged from Sunkesula to KC canal.

Grim situation

On the other hand, the projects on Godavari had no inflows at all though some of the centres in north Telangana districts recorded heavy rainfall. Sirpur (U) in Adilabad recorded the highest of 68.4 mm rainfall.

The agricultural scene continued to be grim with only 5.68 lakh hectares out of 10.59 lakh hectares of paddy crop being sown. It included only 1,000 hectares of rain-fed area and 5.67 lakh hectares of irrigated area. The cotton crop exceeded the normal sowing as the coverage touched 103 per cent. The total area sown under all crops as on date was 34.64 lakh hectares against the normal of 41.43 lakh hectares in the season.

There was deficit rainfall in all districts for the season, except Warangal and Khammam. The deficit was 48 per cent in Nizamabad where the actual rainfall was 398 mm since June 1 against the normal of 772.2 mm. The India Met department forecast heavy rains in Telangana on Thursday and Friday but dry weather on Saturday and Sunday.