New plan puts brakes on Mission Kakatiya

​Hyderabad: Has the Telangana state government dumped Mission Kakatiya? Doubts in this regard arise as no fresh action plan has been prepared to revive the abandoned local waterbodies and tanks in villages after Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao assumed office for the second consecutive term on December 13 last.

The TRS government accorded top priority to Mission Kakatiya, launched with a sole aim of strengthening rural economy by reviving tanks, in KCR’s first term between 2014 and 2018 end. Out of 46,531 tanks, more than 60 per cent were revived in four phases spending more than Rs 7,000 crore in the last five years. 

Nearly Rs 2,000 crore has been earmarked every year exclusively for the mission since 2014.Officials said that the Irrigation department did not prepare any fresh plans for the rejuvenation of the tanks so far. The government is supposed to take up fifth phase for the development of leftover tanks under the Mission Kakatiya. Nearly 10,000 tanks are not covered under the mission.

Most of the major tanks have already been revived in the four phases. All works in the first two phases were completed and the pending works under third and fourth phase is still under progress. Officials said that the leftover abandoned tanks are small in the storage capacity. No proposal to take up the revival works under fifth phase of the Mission Kakatiya were prepared by the government till date.

The officials said that on the instruction of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the Irrigation department has come out with a new action plan linking all revived tanks with major and medium dams and construction of check dams on major streams to rejuvenate the dying streams in the state on a priority basis. All the officials of the Irrigation departments were already holding series of meetings to prepare a strategy to the optimum utilisation of the water from major and medium projects by shifting to the tanks. 

All these works will be taken up jointly by minor and major irrigation projects. “KCR wanted to interlink all tanks, streams, canals, minor, medium and major irrigation projects to ensure the available of water sources utilised for drinking water and irrigation needs all through the year. 

After the completion of Kaleshwaram and Palamuru Ranga Reddy Lift Irrigation scheme, every tank in the state will get abundant water which will be preserved for local needs,” officials said. The Irrigation department is working out a strategy to achieve the targets set by KCR in the next coming years.