City gets Manjeera

Water scarcity in city forced CM to revoke his decision

After a gap of nearly two years, the pumping of Manjeera water for the city began on Tuesday night.

Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Ameerpet, Madhapur, Hafizpet and a few pockets in Secunderabad used to receive Manjeera waters for decades till the supply was stopped in October 2015 following the decision of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to restrict Manjeera water to the erstwhile Medak district to facilitate agriculture and drinking needs.

Water scarcity in Hyderabad due to the dismal scene at the Krishna basin projects and the lack of water in the Nagarjunasagar dam foreshores compelled the Chief Minister to revoke his decision.

On Tuesday, following the Chief Minister’s decision, irrigation minister T. Harish Rao ordered that Manjeera waters from the Singur dam in Medak district should be supplied to the capital immediately to meet its drinking water needs.

The water was redirected to the city from Tuesday night with Engineer-in-Chief C. Muralidhar overseeing the operations.

A similar plan was initiated for the Udayasamudram project to ensure drinking water supplies to Nalgonda.

With this, Hyderabad will now get its requirement of 400 million gallons a day (MGD) from three sources — Singur (Manjeera, 100 MGD), Nagarjunasagar (Krishna, 180 MGD) and Yellampally (Godavari, 120 MGD).

“We will reduce about 90 MGD out of the 270 MGD of water supplied from the Nagarjunasagar dam. That water will be diverted to the Udayasamudram project for Nalgonda,” said Water Board director B. Vijaya Kumar Reddy.

“This arrangement will continue till water availability situation improves at the NS dam,” he added.

Mr Chandrasekhar Rao in a press release noted that there was no flood flow water in the Krishna river and Nagarjunasagar had hit dead storage.

This was creating problems for the drinking water supply to Hyderabad and Nalgonda districts and hence the decision to release water from Singur dam for the capital.