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Telangana to take up temporary repairs to Kaleshwaram project barrages
Telangana govt to quickly repair damaged Medigadda barrage for upcoming monsoon irrigation. Cabinet also discusses NDSA report on Kaleshwaram project.
Hyderabad The Telangana government will take up temporary repairs to the damaged portions of Medigadda barrage of Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme on Godavari river on war footing to ensure that the command area under the project would get irrigation during the upcoming monsoon.
A decision to this effect was taken at the state cabinet meeting headed by chief minister A Revanth Reddy at the state secretariat on Monday.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, state information and public relations minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy said the cabinet had discussed in detail the interim report submitted by the expert committee of the National Dam Safety Authority recently.
The interim report of the NDSA said there is no guarantee that the Medigadda barrage would become fully operational if the repairs are carried out and there was no scope of storing the water in the barrage.
“However, the cabinet decided to take up temporary repairs to the damaged portions of the barrage so that water could be released to the crops. We shall take the engineers into confidence before releasing the water, instead of going purely by technical aspects of the barrage,” the minister said.
The cabinet decided that the government would go by the final report of the NDSA committee on restoring the three barrages of the Kaleshwaram project – Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla. “We shall soon visit the barrages again and see how best we can get the benefit out of the project,” Reddy said.
The cabinet decided to purchase the entire quantity of paddy, which was damaged due to unseasonal rains in the last few days, at the minimum support price. “We shall see that the farmers would not sell their produce even for a rupee less than the MSP,” the minister said, adding that the collectors had been entrusted with the responsibility of procuring paddy without any hassles.
Reddy further said the cabinet resolved to procure the entire fine rice required for the state directly from the farmers by paying them a bonus of ₹500 per quintal from the next Kharif season.
The cabinet decided to celebrate the 10th formation day of Telangana on June 2 in a big way. “We have decided to invite Sonia Gandhi to Hyderabad and honour her for granting statehood to the region,” he said.
The cabinet also resolved to constitute mothers’ committees to take up the responsibility of maintaining schools from the next academic year.
