Hyderabad: T Harish Rao, Minister for Irrigation T Harish Rao for Telangana State, heavily criticized Central Government for not allocating funds for State’s irrigation initiative namely Mission Kakatiya. He further commented that Niti Aayog recommended Central Help, but the Centre did not take notice.
During the Question Hour the Council members, such as P Sudhakar Reddy, N Laxman Rao and V Gangadhar Goud raised some question, to which he replied that starting from personalities like ‘Waterman of India’ that is Rajendra Singh to many other leaders and institutions like Member of British Parliament virendra Sharma, British High Commissioner Handro Michendro, former Union Minister for Water Resource Uma Bharati, Vice Chairman of Niti Ayog Arvind Panagariya, Agriculture Scientist MS Swaminathan, Agriculture Minister of Ethopia Yesu Abrah Ale and many other dignitaries from about 19 countries had paid visit to Mission Kakatiya and hailed the government’s initiative.
Rao further said that about 2.88 lakh acre new ayacut is to be stabilized in Telangana State after Mission Kakatiya and this will help reach 10 lakh acres after programme completion. Also, Village tanks have the capacity of about 244 TMC in Telangana region but before the division of Andhra Pradesh, the gross misrule by the leaders, such tanks were either encroached upon or were neglected.
He explained the Mission Kakatiya results in depth. He also said that crop yield had shot up in recent times. Yield of crops such as cotton as gone up by 11.6 percent, maize by about 6.7 percent and paddy above 4.4 percent. “The groundwater level also rose from 6.9 metres to 9.2 metres after Mission Kakatiya was implemented,” Rao said, further adding that fish production in these village tanks also increased from 36 per cent to 39 per cent.
The Minister also conveyed that many other states like Maharashtra for example had already replicated the scheme in drought-hit Latur and Osmanabad districts to be able to improve water table levels in the ground.
Mission Kakatiya is Telangana Government Initiative that is to ensure all minor irrigation tanks and lakes in the state are restored.
Under this programme the Government of Telangana has set target to complete within five years the restoration work of 46,531 lakes and tanks across the state.
The method of Mission Kakatiya is such that, the silt deposit in the existing tanks and other water bodies is removed in order to increase water storage capacity. This helps in rejuvenating old tanks and building new more tanks.
During the Nizam rule, a total of 244 TMC storage capacity was already operating in the Telangana region specifically. But after Nizam rule, due to gross negligence, most of the capacity was lost.