Telangana to bring land acquisition act to speed up irrigation projects

Telangana government will enact its own land acquisition act to speed up work on irrigation projects as people are expected to judge the government's performance mainly on this account, according to state irrigation minister T Harish Rao.

Resistance from people, legal hurdles to alternate land pooling plans are some of the other reasons behind the government's push for a state level act, whose sole intent, according to Rao, was to eliminate the procedural delays that emanate from the provisions of the Central Act of 2013.

"Irrigation projects across India have been facing delays on account of the Central Act (The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013) as it prescribes a very elaborate and time consuming procedures. No elected government in India can achieve results on irrigation front in a full five-year term if it has no alternative but to follow these procedures. Hence we seek to bring out our own land acquisition act as was already done by few other states, only to simplify these procedures," the minister said citing examples like the total time required to complete an environmental impact assessment study.

Land acquisition is an even bigger challenge for a large size project like Kaleshwaram Irrigation Project, which was redesigned by the Telangana government with an enhanced water storage capacity among other changes.

The government proposes to create a new irrigation potential of 1.8 million acres besides supplementing the water needs of an another 1.8 million acres in command areas of the existing irrigation projects across 7 districts with the help of this project. The irrigation department needs to acquire 1 lakh acres of land at an estimated cost of Rs 3,600 crore towards land acquisition to fully implement the project.

The state government had lost precious time in deciding which way to go after the attempt to convert the Ordinance into the Act with amendments to the 2013 legislation moved in circles before Government of India finally told the states to enact their own legislation in accordance with the Central law, according to the minister.

Interstate agreement signed with Maharashtra government over the construction of three barrages on River Godavari and two of its tributaries- Wain Ganga and Pranahita- involving changes in project heights and contour levels, was an other substantive attempt directed towards executing this project without further delays, the minister said.

Telangana government seeks to fully utilise the allocation of 950 tmc of Godavari water through these and other projects as quickly as possible since the alleged discrimination on irrigation front was one of the central themes that ran throug the history of separate statehood movement for Telangana. Kaleshwaram is the core project in this goal and is estimated to cost more than Rs 80,000 crore.

On top of the huge capital cost, the government also has to provide 4,700 MW of power to operate this essentially an lift irrigation project embedded with set of electro mechanical lifts proposed on multiple barrages and reservoirs. These pumps will lift Godavari water from less than 100 meters of mean sea level (MSL) to a height of more than 550 metres when it reaches to the contentious Mallanna Sagar artificial reservoir within 100 km distance from Hyderabad.

Telangana lift irrigation projects, including the Kaleshwaram and the other upcoming schemes would require about 8,000 MW of power, making them as the most expensive proposition. However, lift irrigation was seen as the only way to meet the irrigation needs of Telangana owing to the geographical conditions of the region. As water becomes an expensive resource for Telangana, the government planning to tryout new concepts such as piped irrigation to avoid seepage and evaporation on way to the fields, according to Rao.