Hyderabad: Irrigation and Civil Supplies Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has instructed officials to speed up the work on the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel. He wants the project to be finished by December 2026.
The minister made these statements during a meeting held at Jalasoudha to review irrigation projects in the Devarakonda and Miryalguda Assembly constituencies.
He also announced that the government has released ₹4,637 crore to complete the project. The tunnel will function using gravity flow, which will save about ₹200 crore every year by avoiding extra lifting costs. The project is expected to provide great benefits to the fluoride-affected Nalgonda district.
Additionally, Reddy mentioned that ₹440 crore will be used for lining the SLBC high-level canal, which will help in irrigating nearly 4 lakh acres. The Dindi project, on the other hand, is expected to irrigate 3.41 lakh acres in the drought-prone and fluoride-affected areas of Nalgonda district. It will also provide drinking water to 200 villages. Similarly, the Nakkelganda project is being fast-tracked to benefit tribal and backward regions in Telangana.
Reddy also ordered an investigation into the check dams built during the previous BRS regime. He claimed that many of these dams were constructed without proper planning and have either been damaged or washed away. According to the minister, poor assessments of water availability and location were major reasons for this failure. He accused the previous government of a scam and called for those responsible to be held accountable. He gave an example from Huzurnagar, where a check dam was moved from a wide stream to a narrower one, but the bill was still claimed based on the original estimate.
The SLBC tunnel, once complete, will have the capacity to deliver 4,000 cusecs of water daily, making it the world’s largest irrigation tunnel built without intermediary audits. Of the total 44 km length of the tunnel, about 9.559 km of boring still remains. JP Associates, the company handling the project along with its US-based partners, assured the minister that they are importing critical components to speed up the project’s completion.
