KTR Seeks National Status for Kaleshwaram Project

Hyderabad: Telangana has time and again urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to designate the Kaleshwaram, or Palamuru-Rangareddy, lift irrigation project as a national project.

At its meeting on December 6, Minister of Industry and Information Technology K.T. Rama Rao has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the high-powered steering committee to evaluate the Telangana Palamuru project for national status.

In a tweet tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, Rama Rao, who is also the Working President of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), made the request.

He recalled Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's repeated requests for the Kaleshwaram project or the Palamuru lift irrigation project to be designated as a national project.

"While Polavaram in AP & Upper Bhadra in Karnataka are being recognised as national projects, kindly ensure that the world’s largest multi-stage lift irrigation project, Kaleshwaram or Palamuru project, are considered with equal importance," wrote KTR, as the minister is popularly known.

"Request you, sir, to direct the high-powered steering committee to take up Telangana projects on 6th Dec," he said.

KTR included two media reports in his tweets. According to one of the reports, Karnataka Chief Minister Basvaraj Bommai met with Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Thursday. According to Bommai, Shekhawat replied favourably to the request to declare the Upper Bhadra project a national project.

The Telangana administration has asked the Centre several times to award Kaleshwaram or Palamuru national project designation. The issue has also been brought up by the Chief Minister with the Prime Minister.

The Centre had previously said that no irrigation project in the country would be granted national project status in the future, but its reported recent decision to do so for Polavaram and Upper Bhadra has upset the Telangana administration.