KCR launches last phase of Rs 1 trn Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project

The project is designed to lift as much as 180 thousand million cubic feet of water from the River Godavari

Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao today inaugurated Markook pumphouse, the last of the giant multi-stage Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project and released the water to the newly built Kondapochammasagar reservoir, located in Siddipet district, about 60 km from here.

Started four years ago at an estimated cost of over Rs 1 trillion, the project features 22 pumping stations with a combined capacity of 4,680 Mw along the 250 km-odd stretch starting at Medigadda in Karimnagar district besides a chain of reservoirs, making it to be the largest of its kind in the world.

The project is designed to lift as much as 180 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water from River Godavari, which flows at an altitude of 100 meters MSL (mean seal level) to little over 600 MSL - the average altitude of the major geographical area of Telangana, for irrigation, drinking water and industrial use.

Discrimination in water sharing between the regions was one of the contentious issues behind the decades-old statehood demand, which had finally met with success with the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into Telangana and residual AP state in June 2014.

Chief minister Rao, who owed to build water projects capable of irrigating 10 million acres of land in the state, had declared Kaleshwaram as the key vehicle to realise his goal by tweaking a similar Pranahita-Chevella lift scheme proposed by the earlier Congress government.

As part of this project, the government had built a chain of new reservoirs with a total storage capacity of 165 tmc ft in a record time. The project is also being used to fill the existing dams and minor irrigation tanks along the way.

"This unique multistage project involves lifting of water from Godavari at an altitude of 88 MMSL at Medigadda and finally bringing it to Kondapochammasagar situated at an altitude of 618 MMSL. Today the dream of Telangana people has come," chief minister KCR said.

The chief minister said that the Telangana farmers would be producing the crops worth of Rs 1 trillion per year on the back of the irrigation facilities created by the project. " The Food Corporation of India(FCI) has done a procurement of 8.3 million tonnes of paddy in the country. Of this 5.2 million tonnes of paddy has been procured only in Telangana. The new irrigation projects have already started making an impact on our agriculture,"he said.

Telangana has an allocation of 950 tmc of water in the multi-state Godavari Basin. Of this the state will be able to utilise as much as 521 tmc with the completion of Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project, according to chief minister Rao.

Some of the big construction companies like L&T, Shapoorji Pallonji, Navayuga and Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) were engaged to complete the project.

"While the Kaleshwaram project requires 4,680 MWs of total capacity to lift 2 tmc of water per day, MEIL itself established 15 pumping stations with a total capacity of 3840 MWs. This indicates the role played by the company for this prestigious project of Telangana," MEIL director B Srinivas Reddy said in a statement.