NALGONDA: Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka on Sunday urged the Government of Andhra Pradesh to immediately halt the Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation Scheme, stating that it would adversely affect Telangana’s irrigation interests. adversely Speaking at a public meeting after laying the foundation stone for the ₹600-crore Jawahar Lift Irrigation Scheme at Vangaveedu in Madhira mandal, Khammam district, he said that while just one TMC ft of water per day released through the left canal of the Nagarjunasagar Project irrigates lakhs of acres, the diversion of 11 TMC ft per day through Pothireddypadu causes grave injustice to farmers of the erstwhile Nalgonda and Khammam districts. Such diversion, he warned, would empty the Srisailam Project in just 25 days. He said that Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy are fighting both at the Centre and in the courts to stop the Banakacharla reservoir works and to ensure that both Banakacharla and the Srisailam lift operations are halted. Recalling past events, Bhatti said that during the UPA government, he had appealed to Sonia Gandhi to exclude the seven tribal mandals of the Bhadrachalam division from the Polavaram Project’s submergence area, which was achieved through legal amendments. However, he alleged that the BJP government at the Centre and the then TRS government in the state secretly brought in an ordinance handing over two lakh acres belonging to tribals for the Polavaram Project. He demanded that if Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu truly cares for tribal communities, he should reduce the height of the Polavaram dam to save these two lakh acres. He stressed that only after Telangana’s upstream Godavari projects are completed and the share of net and flood waters is determined should the topic of Banakacharla even be considered. Bhatti recalled that in the 2018 elections, only he from Madhira and Podem Veerayya from Bhadrachalam had won on a Congress ticket from Khammam district, but every Congress worker acted like an MLA and carried the party flag high. In the recent general elections, Congress won nine out of 10 Assembly seats in Khammam, for which he saluted the party workers. Speaking about the Jawahar Jalimudi Lift Irrigation Scheme, he said that despite raising the issue in the Legislative Assembly for 10 years, the TRS government ignored the needs of people in this area. Farmers in the tail-end areas of Madhira constituency suffered because water from the third zone of the NSP left canal had to first flow into Andhra territory before returning, something he described as practically impossible. He recalled that during Kiran Kumar Reddy’s tenure as Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, efforts were made to bring the Madhira area from the NSP left canal’s third zone into the second zone. Surveys were completed, and funds were nearly sanctioned when the Telangana statehood movement interrupted the process. After coming to power, the BRS government neglected this problem for a decade despite repeated reminders, he alleged. He noted that after Congress came to power in Telangana, the state government shifted Madhira constituency from the NSP left canal’s third zone to the second zone and sanctioned the ₹600-crore Jawahar Lift Irrigation Scheme to irrigate 30,000 acres. Stating that Madhira Assembly constituency has five mandals, each with a natural water source between every two mandals, Bhatti said the Kattalairu and Jalimudi projects have already used these resources, and now the Jawahar Lift Irrigation works have begun. He made it clear that the Congress government will never accept the construction of the Banakacherla reservoir in Guntur district by Andhra Pradesh.
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