TG won’t forego single drop of water: Uttam

 Hyderabad: Attributing the dismal outcome of the state's endeavors to utilize its river water entitlements to two "historical blunders" committed by the leadership of the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) regime, Minister for Irrigation and Civil Supplies N Uttam Kumar Reddy has described the decisions in question as "suicidal" for the country’s youngest state. During a presentation in the House, Minister Reddy highlighted how the BRS government's actions resulted in having a catastrophic effect on the State.

As slides moved on the massive screen in the Assembly, Reddy's voice boomed through the chamber, placing on record how the BRS regime had “deliberately” shifted the offtake points of flagship irrigation projects. The Palamuru Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme (PRLIS), originally designed to draw water from upstream of the Jurala project, was relocated to the Srisailam reservoir. Similarly, the Pranahita Chevella project—meant to tap Godavari waters at Thummidihetti—was moved to Medigadda.

"These shifts were intended to wipe out the mark of the Congress government, which had initiated these projects in the undivided Andhra Pradesh," Reddy charged. The result? A "catastrophic effect" that left Telangana parched and impoverished. Delving into what he called a “betrayal”, Reddy revealed that the BRS regime had spent over Rs 1.83 lakh crore on irrigation without delivering "any tangible benefits to the state”.

Borrowings at exorbitant interest rates of 11 to 11.5 per cent had saddled future generations with crushing debt. "But for transforming these into low-interest loans," he said, "the state would have slipped into a full-blown financial crisis”.

This revelation set the tone for a broader assault on mismanagement, spotlighting disputes over water allocation with Andhra Pradesh (AP), stalled projects, and ongoing legal battles before tribunals.

Reddy's presentation zeroed in on the PRLIS, a project emblematic of the deliberate betrayal of the Palamuru region during the BRS regime. He asserted that it could have yielded "more benefits with lesser investment" if the intake had stayed at Jurala, as originally conceived.

Instead, costs ballooned from the initial Rs 32,000 crore to Rs 55,000 crore in the 2022 Detailed Project Report (DPR) submitted to the Central Water Commission (CWC).

Completion, he warned, would push expenses to Rs 80,000-Rs 84,000 crore. Shredding BRS’ claims of “90 per cent completion” with only 25-30 per cent funding, Reddy called it "downright cheating”, letting down people in the southern Telangana districts." Not a single acre had received irrigation despite massive outlays, and over 39,000 acres of land acquisition remained pending, he stated.

The Minister decried the restructuring of the Pranahita Chevella project, renamed and reconfigured under BRS as part of the larger Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS). Shifting the intake to Medigadda, he said, led to disaster: three barrages now under repair, yielding "zero irrigation benefits”.