HYDERABAD: Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy has defended his action in posing some of the newly conceived projects across the Godavari in the Telangana region for Central assistance.

He said the Government was not in a position to take up any irrigation projects beyond the listed 26 projects, which were pending, in view of the resource crunch. He was already struggling to push forward the 26 projects whose cost was a whopping Rs. 46,000 crores. He was intervening during supplementaries to a main question in the Assembly on Thursday on one of these projects, the Pranahita-Chevella link.

`Government committed'

The Chief Minister said the Congress Government's sincerity in limiting itself to executing the 26 projects could not be questioned as they were pending since long. However, his Government was committed to build more irrigation projects in Telangana in view of its backwardness.

Under the circumstances, he had pleaded with the Centre to execute these as national projects with an outlay of Rs. 25,000 crores. They included Dummagudem, Devadula III, IV and V and Singareddypalli. He was hopeful about a positive outcome since the Congress was in power at the Centre apart from the fact that AICC president Sonia Gandhi, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a soft corner for Andhra Pradesh.

Dr. Reddy observed that Medak and Ranga Reddy districts were virtually ignored while planning irrigation projects in Telangana. He, therefore, had proposed the Pranahita-Chevella project to bring 160 tmcft from the Pranahita through Yellampalli to cover these two districts.

Survey taken up

Major Irrigation Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah assured T. Devender Goud (TDP) that there was no question of ignoring the second part of the project from Yellampalli covering the two districts. A detailed survey was on covering the second part, which would supplement Manjira Barrage and Manair dam.

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