Vijayawada:16 out of 24 pumps in the Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Scheme have started functioning on monday and water is expected to enter the Krishna district on June 20th, officials reported to the Chief Minister on Monday. Irrigation Secretary Shashi Bhushan informed him that NITI Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index ranks Andhra Pradesh in the 3rd place in the country. The CWMI is an important tool created to assess and improve the performance of States and Union Territories in efficient management of water resources. NITI Aayog has conducted this water data collection exercise in partnership with the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation and all the States and Union Territories.“We are number 1 in 12 of the 28 indicators used to create the index. Our goal must be to become a distant number 1. Every acre of our state should be irrigated.”“Analyse dry spells and mitigation methods. Completing our priority projects is one part of our mission. But we must also be experts in water management, spreading awareness on water harnessing, optimisation of the deployment of our current tools like rain guns and micro-irrigation tanks and ensuring maximum yield in agriculture.”He instructed officials to issue an order that any area with ground water more than 35m this year will not be allowed to make bore wells for agricultural purposes. He said that in a phased manner, this should reduce, and ground water must increase to 20m across the state.
The Polavaram Irrigation Project has reached an overall progress of 55.38%, officials reported to the Chief Minister during the 64th review of the project. This includes the head works, the Right Main Canal and the Left Main Canal. The Chief Minister virtually inspected the progress using a live drone feed. 75.2% of the excavation for the spillway and spill channel has been completed, i.e., 838.80 lakh cubic metres out of 1,115.59 lakh cubic metres. This week, against a target of 11.76 lakh cubic metres, 3.02 lakh cubic metres of earthwork was excavated for the spill channel, pilot channel, spillway, left bank and approach channel.26.1% of the concreting for the spillway, stilling basin and spill channel is completed, accounting for a total of 9.6 lakh cubic metres out of 36.79 lakh cubic metres. 28,000 cubic metres of concrete was laid this week.61.17% of the construction of radial gates have been completed with trunnion castings and trunnion pins being the only remaining components. The Chief Minister then briefly reviewed the progress of the 54 priority projects with all the Engineers-in-Chief through a video conference. “You must ensure that at least by July, all 54 projects are ready to start functioning, and help make the state ready for the upcoming rains”, he said. Minister Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao, Principal Secretary G. Sai Prasad and Special Chief Secretary M. Ravichandra were present at the meeting.
