Focus on Devadula, Smita Sabharwal tells officials 

Warangal: It’s time to speed up the works of JCR Devadula Lift Irrigation Scheme, the Chief Minister's Office Additional Secretary Smita Sabharwal said. She inspected the ongoing works of greenfield surge pool pump house under third phase at Devannapet village under Hasanparthy mandal in Warangal Urban district on Wednesday.

She told the representatives of the Megha Engineering contracting agency to complete the works before the timeframe set by the State government, which is June 2020. “The irrigation officials need to monitor at regular intervals so that to ensure the pace of the works,” Smita Sabharwal said. She directed the officials to deploy additional workforce and machinery to achieve the target.

The 49.06 kilometer-long tunnel from Ramappa to Dharmasagar is the lengthiest in the Asian continent. The tunnel carries three pipelines (each of 3 meter diameter), the officials informed. As of now, work on 42 kilometer tunnel construction has been completed and the remaining 7 kilometers would soon be completed, they said. They added that 31 MW capacity motors will be installed to draw 1,750 cusecs of water a day.

Urban District Collector Prashanth J Patil, OSD Sridhar Rao Deshpande, retired engineers’ forum chairman Shyamprasad Reddy, lift irrigation advisor to the government Penta Reddy, irrigation superintending engineer C Muralidhar, Devadula chief engineer Bangaraiah and superintending engineer A Sudhakar Reddy were among others present.  

It may be mentioned here that work on Rs 1,494 crore Devadula lift scheme was launched way back in 2004 with an objective to irrigate 6.21 lakh acres in waters-tarved (erstwhile) districts of Warangal, Karimnagar and Nalgonda.