Godavari swells after getting inflow from Maha, Karnataka

Even before the south west monsoon rain starts over Telangana in true sense, the State rivers and major irrigation projects have started getting good inflows thanks to the heavy downpour in the neighbouring States of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The biggest beneficiary was the Sriramasagar project across river Godavari in Nizamabad district as the authorities in Maharashtra have opened the gates of their Bhabili project releasing 30000 cusecs water following copious rains in Nanded district. Later in the discharge increased to one lakh cusecs. Telangana was likely to receive 1.5 tmcft of water by his evening.

Maharashtra has released the water from Bhabili almost a fortnight before the schedule of July 1 fixed by the Supreme Court.

Due to the rains in the nearby catchment areas projects like Jurala and Srisailam have also started getting inflows, unusual for this early days of monsoon. While Jurala in Mahbubnagar was getting 2900 cusecs the inflow into Srisailam project had reached 1500 cusecs.

Narayanpur project of Karnataka from which water is released to Telangana was also getting in flow of 10000 cusecs and the state authorities have also started releasing water from there.

This NHS's brought cheers to the farmers as well as the authorities as the water

level had reached the dead level in most of the projects in the State.

State irrigation minister T Harish Rao has put the engineers and field officers of his department on alert and asked them to cancel their leaves and be available to monitor the Inflows and I view of rains in Telangana as well as neighbouring States.

While since the official onset of the season on June 7 some districts in Telangana have received good rains others including Hyderabad were waiting for the skies to open up. The Indian Meteorological Department has forecast more rains over the next five days in the State.

“All the irrigation department engineers should stay put at their place of postings and not leave the headquarters. They should, however, visit water bodies and reservoirs receiving fresh inflows to evaluate the present conditions and take up any immediate work that might be required to ensure the safety of the structures related to such water bodies”, irrigation minister Rao said.

Telangana officials were happy and hopeful that good rains in Maharashtra so early will be helpful to Telangana and all its damns across river Godavari will benefit from it.