Pulichintala readied with less capacity

• Chief Minister to inaugurate it today
• It can store only 15 tmcft at present

Vijayawada: The Pulichintala Project, which is set for inauguration on Saturday by the Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, would store just 15 tmc ft of water in the first year. This quantity is 31 tmc ft less than the capacity of the project. Though the officials of the irrigation department and the ruling party leaders claim that the low storage of water is common and technical for any new project, the farmers see that the low storage is because the project is incomplete and might take a couple of months.

According to the information available, 5 out of 24 gates were not erected yet with full hydraulic mechanism. As the work was hurried to keep the project ready for inauguration, there are technical doubts over the strength and fitness of the 19 gates erected so far. It is not guaranteed that the gates and the hydraulic system would help in storing the water for the next Kariff as being promised by the government.

The Minister for Secondary Education, K P Saradhi, who is monitoring the arrangements for the inauguration of the project and the subsequent public meeting to be addressed by the Chief Minister, agreed that only 19 gates were fully installed in the project and the remaining five would be installed shortly bringing them into full operational. “Technically, the project can only store 15 tmc ft of water in the first year not because of the pending small works including gates, but because of the technicalities of the project. Any new project would store just one third of its total capacity in the first year,” Saradhi said.