Kaleshwaram project to be inaugurated on June 21

Telangana government will inaugurate Kaleswaram lift irrigation project on June 21, an official statement read.

Chief Ministers of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra -- K Chandrasekhar Rao, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and Devendra Fadnavis will participate in the function. The three CMs will switch on three pumps at Kannepalli Pumphouse as a token of the inauguration of the project.

Kaleswaram Lift Irrigation Project is built on River Godavari at Kannepalli village, Mahadevpur Mandal, Jayasankar Bhupalapalli district of Telangana. The project with 45,000 acres of ayacut aims at lift irrigate almost 235 TMC of water from river Godavari. This is the first biggest project taken up after the formation of Telangana state.

Kaleswaram lift irrigation project (KLIP) utilizes only the flood water. Though the project is massive in technical and engineering aspects; land acquisition is very limited because of underground set up like pumping stations, tunnels constructing and usage of existing reservoirs; claims Telangana government.

The World's biggest and largest underground pumping station is built in this project. Simultaneously 81 km long tunnel is nearing to completion between existing Yellampalli barrage and upcoming Mallanna Sagar reservoirs.

Some of the salient features and engineering marvels of this project are -- highest pump and motor capacity in the world, each motor capacity 139 MW and total 7 pumps are built, it has the longest tunnel in Asia, biggest surge pool and three new barrages and three pump houses are under construction.

As per the statistics, these are some of the longest and biggest irrigation systems in the world with a total length of 1832 km, canal length 1531 km, total tunnel length 203 km, and pressure pipeline length 98 km.

There will be 20 Lifts, 19 pump houses, 88 pumps in the project. The project consumes 13,558 mega units and it needs the power of 4627.24 MW.

The project will change the face and fate of Telangana particularly northern parts i.e. Karimnagar, Rajanna Siricilla, Siddipet, Medak, Yadadri, Nalgonda, Sangareddy, Nizamabad, Jagityala, Kamareddy, Nirmal, Medchal and Peddapalli districts. This will directly benefit farmers through improving irrigation and allayed and rural improvement activity.

Project benefits include increased agriculture yield, guarantee crop, increasing of crop intensity and area, agriculture diversification, commercial crops improvement and fish production increasing is possible. This project will give assurance for employment, crop production, food security, poverty eradication, improvement of health and nutrition and socio-economic conditions of farmers and villagers apart from livelihood.

The project can supply irrigation water to 13 districts by diverting 180 TMC of Godavari flood water. It will also provide drinking water supply to Hyderabad and Secundrabad cities and villages. This is the first project, which has received full permission from the Centre.