Heavy Rains in Catchment Areas Boost Kharif Crop Prospects for Telangana Farmers

HYDERABAD: Rains in the upstream catchment areas of the Krishna and Godavari rivers have brought fresh inflows into most of the projects in Telangana, renewing the hopes of farmers for a successful Kharif season.

The Jurala reservoir, a key project across the Krishna river for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, began receiving flood waters early on Sunday and has now become surplus. Authorities started spillway discharge from around 1 am on Thursday as inflows rose to over 50,000 cusecs from Wednesday night. By Thursday evening, inflows were recorded at nearly 90,000 cusecs.

As a standard operating procedure to maintain flood cushion, engineers lifted 10 crest gates by one metre each, releasing about 40,000 cusecs of flood. Two more gates were lifted in the afternoon, increasing spillway discharge to over 47,000 cusecs. Additionally, 38,000 cusecs was being released into the river course after hydel generation.

The flood discharge from Jurala is enabling hydel generation at the Lower Jurala hydel station downstream. The released water is also raising the water level in the Srisailam reservoir further downstream. By Thursday evening, water storage in Srisailam crossed 46 tmc ft, against its full capacity of 215.8 tmc ft.

According to flood monitoring officials of the Irrigation Department, upstream projects such as Almatti and Narayanpur (across Krishna in Karnataka) and Ujjani (across Bhima in Maharashtra) are also discharging flood and continue to receive substantial inflows. The meteorological department has forecast that this pattern will continue for at least 10 days, with inflows of at least 30,000 cusecs.

In the Godavari basin, projects including Kaddam, Sriramsagar, Yellampally, and barrages such as Medigadda, Sammakka, and Sitamma Sagar are also receiving heavy inflows from local catchment areas in Telangana and upstream in Maharashtra. By 5.30 pm on Thursday, inflows were recorded as follows: Kaddam 48,150 cusecs, Yellampally 1.91 lakh cusecs, Medigadda 1.55 lakh cusecs, Sammakka 7.6 lakh cusecs, and Sitamma Sagar 3.81 lakh cusecs.

So far this season, crops have been cultivated on 83 lakh acres, including cotton (46.34 lakh acres), paddy (20.46 lakh acres), maize (4.7 lakh acres), redgram (4.43 lakh acres), soybean (3.67 lakh acres), and greengram (0.63 lakh acres).