Telangana to revive Pranahita-Chevella project, seeks Maharashtra’s approval for barrage

THe Telangana authorities has decided to resurrect the Pranahita-Chevella raise irrigation intrigue, originally launched below Y S Rajasekhar Reddy government in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2008 and later abandoned by the Bharat Rashtra Samithi government (BRS), which redesigned it as the controversial Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project.Chief minister A Revanth Reddy on Wednesday instructed the state irrigation department to initiate the dialogue with the neighbouring Maharashtra government seeking its consent for the construction of a barrage at Tummidihatti village of Komuram Bheem district at a height of 150 metres.“We shall write to the Maharashtra government seeking a consultation on the construction of Tummidihatti barrage, a key component of Pranahita-Chevella lift irrigation scheme. We shall also seek the support of Union coal minister G Kishan Reddy in initiating the dialogue with Maharashtra,” state irrigation minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy said.The Pranahita-Chevella lift irrigation scheme was conceived in 2008 to harness water from the Pranahita river, a tributary of Godavari, to lift 160 tmc (thousand million cubic feet) by constructing a barrage at Tummidihatti at a height of 152 metres and diverting the water into the existing Sripada Sagar Yellampalli project.The project was aimed at irrigating 16 lakh acres across Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Medak, and Ranga Reddy districts, while providing drinking water to surrounding areas and Hyderabad. The estimated cost of the project was ₹38,500 crore.However, after the formation of Telangana, the previous BRS government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao in 2016 dropped Tummidihatti project and decided to redesign the entire project as Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme by relocating the barrage to Medigadda in the downstream of Godavari river.The BRS government argued that there is no sufficient availability of water at Tummidihatti. Secondly, the construction of barrage at Tummidihatti at 152 metres would result in submergence of hundreds of acres in Maharashtra leading to inter-state disputes.Thus, the KCR government took up the Kaleshwaram project in 2016 by constructing three barrages – Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla, which resulted in the escalation of project cost from ₹38,000 crore to over ₹1 lakh crore. “The project was completed in 2021, but within two years, all the three barrages suffered damages in October 2023 floods,” Uttam Kumar Reddy said.An official statement from the chief minister’s office said at the Wednesday meeting, the department officials and irrigation experts suggested that constructing the Tummidihatti barrage at a height of 150 meters would enable the utilization of at least 100 tmc of water and fulfil the interests of Telangana.“At the time of construction of Pranahita-Chevella project, Maharashtra had agreed to the construction of the barrage at Tummidihatti at a height of 148 meters, instead of 152 metres. We can convince Maharashtra for the barrage construction at a height of 150 metres, as it would cause a minimum submergence of just around 300 acres,” the statement, quoting the officials, said.In the power-point presentation, the officials brought to the attention of the chief minister about key aspects such as the optimal height for constructing the Thummadihetti barrage and the volume of water that could be utilized based on different construction heights.“The officials said the government had already spent approximately ₹11,000 crore on the Pranahita-Chevella project and canal construction has been completed in several areas. Nearly 71.5 kilometres of canal work has already been executed,” they explained.Revanth Reddy said since the construction of the barrage at 150 metres height would not significantly affect the submergence of areas in Maharashtra, the Telangana government was ready to provide compensation to the displaced.On the restoration of damaged Medigadda barrage, the chief minister ordered the officials expedite the completion of the geo-testing operations for the barrage and complete the works before the start of the monsoon season, the official statement added.