HYDERABAD: With the formal launch of the Pattiseema lift irrigation scheme in Andhra Pradesh, India on Wednesday took a step forward in its ambitious but long-pending goal to interlink major rivers to form a national water grid. The Pattiseema project lifts flood water from the river Godavari and pumps it into the Polavaram right canal that empties into the river Krishna in Vijayawada.
The interlinking of the Godavari and the Krishna has been on the anvil for almost five decades and with the commissioning of the Pattiseema scheme, four major rivers in Andhra Pradesh are now connected to one another: Godavari-Krishna, Krishna-Pennar and Pennar-Tungabhadra.
Thousands of farmers in Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Chittoor districts will benefit from the Godavari-Krishna linkage. About 17 lakh acres including 13 lakhs in the Krishna delta will get assured irrigation water for two agricultural crops round the year. Thousands of villages en route will get drinking water supplies.
The Pattiseema (Polavaram) is one of the major projects envisaged under the national river linking project that aims to connect as many as 30 rivers including the Himalayan and the peninsular. Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh has become the only state with four of these rivers interconnected. The next in the pipeline under the national project is the interlinking of Ken (Madhya Pradesh) and Betwa (Uttar Pradesh) rivers. Though Ken-Betwa was touted to be the first river interlink project under the revised national scheme, AP chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu hurried through the Pattiseema scheme and completed it in record eight months.
The Pattiseema is nothing more than the Polavaram-Vijayawada canal project under the Polavaram dam. But since the Polavaram dam is yet to be taken up, Naidu redesigned the scheme to pump the Godavari water into the already completed Polavaram canal to carry it to the Krishna river 174 km away. The Polavaram dam has been a bone of contention between AP and Telangana on one hand and AP and Odisha on the other. The Centre has declared Polavaram as a national project, but kept it pending due to objections from AP's neighbours. Once completed, the Polavaram will benefit farmers in East Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts too.
Interestingly, the national river interlink project was first conceived about two centuries ago by British engineer Sir Arthur Cotton, who designed the anicuts across the Godavari at Dhowlaiswaram and the Krishna in Vijayawada. The idea was revived by eminent engineer-politician Dr KL Rao about five decades ago. The Polavaram-Vijayawada link was proposed by Dr Rao. Later, TDP founder-president and former chief minister NT Rama Rao and former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy too played a key role in the project in Andhra Pradesh.
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