Bhatti Vikramarka urges AP to halt Srisailam water diversion, lays foundation for Jawahar LIS
Hyderabad: Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka on Sunday urged Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu to stop diverting 11 TMC of water per day from Srisailam through the Pothireddypadu lift system. Speaking at a public meeting after laying the foundation for the ₹600-crore Jawahar Lift Irrigation Scheme (LIS) at Vangaveedu in Madhira mandal, Khammam district, he warned that such diversion would empty Srisailam in just 25 days. It would also cause severe damage to farmers in the erstwhile Nalgonda and Khammam districts.
He said that 1 TMC per day from Nagarjuna Sagar’s left canal irrigates lakhs of acres. Diverting 11 TMC upstream denies Telangana its fair share. He credited Chief Minister Revanth Reddy and Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy for stopping Banakacherla and Srisailam lift operations through legal and political action.
Bhatti links Jawahar LIS pitch to river water disputes
The Deputy CM demanded that AP reduce Polavaram’s height to save two lakh acres of tribal land from submergence. He recalled persuading Sonia Gandhi during the UPA era to legally exclude seven Bhadrachalam division mandals from the project’s submergence zone. He alleged that BJP at the Centre and TRS in Telangana later reversed this through an ordinance.
On the Jawahar LIS, Bhatti said TRS ignored Madhira’s irrigation needs for a decade. Tail-end farmers waited as water from the third zone first flowed into Andhra territory before returning. This, he said, made cultivation unviable. He recalled explaining the issue to Uttam Kumar Reddy when Congress was in opposition. Once in office, Uttam shifted Madhira villages into the second zone and sanctioned the LIS to irrigate 30,000 acres.
Bhatti noted that Madhira’s five mandals have natural water sources between them. This has allowed projects like Kattalairu and Jalimudi to come up, with Jawahar LIS now joining them. Without Sagar water in the left canal, he warned, farmers from Paleru to Sathupalli would be forced back to pre-Sagar crops like jowar and pulses.
He also saluted Congress workers of the undivided Khammam district for winning nine of ten Assembly seats in the recent polls. He called them the backbone of the party’s revival in Telangana.