The Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the Central Water Commission (CWC) has given its techno-economic clearance to three lift irrigation schemes of Telangana that were included in the unapproved projects’ list in the gazette notification issued by the Ministry of Jal Shakti on July 15, 2021, notifying the purview of the Godavari and Krishna River Boards.
They are – Muktheshwaram (Chinna Kaleshwaram) in Jayashankar-Bhupalapally district, Channakha-Korata Barrage in Adilabad and Choutpally Hanmanth Reddy in Nizamabad. The detailed project reports (DPRs) of the three lift irrigation schemes were submitted to the CWC and Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) in September 2021 itself by the State Government.
After appraising the DPRs, different Directorates in CWC had given their approval for the three projects. Later, they were sent for appraisal by the GRMB according to the flow chart of the MoJS. The three LI schemes were taken up for discussion at the 13 th board meeting of GRMB in April this year and the river board had sent it back to CWC with its remarks as well as with the objections raised by Andhra Pradesh.
The CWC has reviewed all the objections raised by AP, set aside the objections and recommended the three projects for techno-economic clearance while forwarding them to TAC. The TAC meeting chaired by Secretary of MoJS Pankaj Kumar that met in New Delhi on Tuesday discussed the three projects at length and the queries raised by TAC members were clarified by officials of Telangana.
Mr. Pankaj Kumar stated that the committee had given its approval for the three projects after getting satisfied with the clarifications, explanations given by a team of officials from Telangana led by Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation) Rajat Kumar. Engineers-in-Chief C. Muralidhar and N. Venkateshwarlu, Chief Engineers T. Srinivas (Adilabad) and R. Madhusudhana Rao (Nizamabad) and OSD to Chief Minister Sridhar Rao Deshpande participated in the meeting from Telangana.
Additional Secretary in MoJS Debosri Mukherhjee, CWC Chairman R.K. Gupta, Members J. Chandrashekhar Iyer, Kushvinder Vohra, Chief Engineers Yogesh Paithankar, B.P. Pandey, Directors of different wings, representatives of Finance, Energy and Agriculture Ministries participated in the meeting from the Union Government.
