Ryots begin farming as Jurala swells with huge inflows in Mahbubnagar

Mahbubnagar: With good inflows into Jurala project, the farmers across erstwhile Mahbubnagar district are expressing happiness and are cheerfully taking up farming activity.

As per the latest information received from Jurala Project Engineer, the project is receiving heavy inflows and has already filled to its full capacity of 9.45 tmcft on Wednesday as against its total capacity of 9.6 tmcft. After more alerts from upstream Narayanpet project that more than 1.90 lakh cusecs of water was released, the Jurala project officials opened 22 gates up to 1 metre height and released water to lower Krishna towards Srisailam project, where in about 1.84 lakh cusecs of water was released downwards.

Until recently, the water level in Jurala was at dead storage level and the farmers across the erstwhile Mahbubnagar where in dilemma whether to take up kharif farming or not. However, with the recent rains they are the happy lots. " June and half of the July passed sans any farming activity. We were fearing that this season we wouldn't take up farming and migrate to Hyderabad for work. But all thanks to rain gods, we could finally get copious rains and the canal water is flowing across our village filling us with hope of taking up paddy cultivation," said Narasimah Nayak, a farmer of Veepanagandla mandal in Wanaparthy district.

Recently, Devarkadra MLA Ala Venkateshwar Reddy also released the water to canals from the Bheema to lift irrigation project and released water to majority parts of Wanaparthy and Mahbubnagar districts through the canals. "This time, we are a bit late. However, farming will be taken up in a big way with the canal water and the farmers need not be worried," said the MLA.

In Mahbubnagar, Excise Minister Srinivas Goud also expressed hope that as soon as the Koilsagar project was filled, more than 50,000 acres under it would be irrigated and the farming community would reap good yields. He recently switched on the lift motors at Jurala and released water to Koilsagar project in Mahbubnagar.

However, the irrigation projects in Nagarkurnool and Kollapur areas are yet to receive water as they have to get water from Kalwakurthy and Palamuru Lift Irrigation projects. As the water from Jurala has already been released, definitely in a few days, the farmers under these two constituencies would also get the canal water and take up farming in a big way, expressed Singireddy Niranjan Reddy, Minister for Agriculture.