The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Powerlines for lift schemes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 23, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Powerlines for lift schemes

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, MARCH 22. Laying of dedicated transmission lines has been taken up as a policy for the first time to ensure power supply for lift irrigation schemes in the State for at least 16 hours a day.

Announcing this in the Assembly today in reply to a query raised by J. Ranga Reddy (CPI-M) and others, the Major Irrigation Minister, P. Lakshmaiah, stated that the Government had released Rs. 26 crores to start with, to ground these works covering 187 lift schemes. The execution of the works and the maintenance of the lift schemes would be borne by the Andhra Pradesh Irrigation Development Corporation.

The Minister said, the maintenance of all the 165 lift schemes under Nagarjunasagar Right and Left bank canals had been handed over to the corporation. Of them, 121 were under the Left Canal and 44 under the Right Canal.

`Contradictory stand'

Mr. Ranga Reddy, Th. Veerabhadram, also of the CPI(M), and K. Balaram Murthy of the Telugu Desam complained that the Minister was "contradictory" on his stand on the maintenance issue.

They recalled the decision announced by him at a legislators' meeting on the subject recently that the maintenance would be directly by the corporation and compared this with the written answer tabled todayaccording to which the maintenance would be by "beneficiary committees /water user associations through APSIDC." They said this implied that the farmers would be left to fend for themselves.

Mr. Lakshmaiah clarified that the decision at the legislators' meeting would take precedence over the reply because the latter was framed much earlier. He also denied the charge that discrimination was shown to Telangana, stating it was the Telugu Desam Government which had discontinued Government maintenance of the lift schemes under the Left Canal while allowing the benefit to those under the Right Canal.

Now that the maintenance of all the lift schemes had been handed over to the APIDC, there would no discrimination any more.

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