Normal life continues to remain affected in many parts of Telangana for the fifth day in a row with heavy to very heavy rains lashing different parts of the State on Tuesday. Incessant rain also damaged standing crops, most of which are in the initial plant growth stage, and also impacted the sowing operations.
In Jagitial district, nine farmhands were stranded on an island in a rivulet course at Bornapally in Raikal mandal. Efforts were on to rescue them with the help of boats by NDRF team, as sending a helicopter was ruled out due to inclement weather. Minister for SC Development K. Eshwar stated that there was no threat to the life of those stranded as the island with over 200 acres of farm lands has no threat of submergence and there were permanent structures for their stay.
Cultivation of crops this Kharif season, already lesser by over 4.2 lakh acres till the last week compared to the same period last year, and the recommended period for sowing of cotton, soybean, green gram and black gram would end with July 15. Delayed sowing of these crops would face the threat of heavy damage due to monsoon retreat and cyclonic rains in October, Agriculture Department officials said.
Against the Agriculture Department’s advice to farmers to take up cotton cultivation in about 70 lakh acres this season, it was not even half (31.87 lakh acres) that extent till the commencement of rains last week. The rains have also inundated and silted the standing crops in large extents in northern districts, mostly along the courses of rivers or rivulets.
Irrigation projects
Meanwhile, with the forecast of heavy flood from the upstream Maharashtra, the authorities of Sriramsagar have decided to keep ample flood cushion in the project by discharging over 81,100 cusecs for 26 spillway gates, 6,000 cusecs with power generation and 15,000 cusecs to Flood Flow Canal, although inflow was 75,700 cusecs at 7 pm.
Except Ramappa lake, 28 other medium irrigation projects in the Godavari Basin have already become surplus or reaching that stage. Against their capacity of 46.65 tmcft, storage was 37.4 tmcft on Tuesday with total inflow of nearly 2.79 lakh cusecs and outflow at 2.58 lakh cusecs. All the eight medium projects in the Krishna Basin too are in a similar stage with total inflow of 2.95 lakh cusecs and outflow of 2.72 lakh cusecs.
With the commencement of spillway discharge of flood at Tungadhadra dam on Tuesday evening and at Almatti-Narayanpur on Monday evening, Jurala-Srisailam are set to receive heavy flood early from Wednesday. The authorities at Jurala have started emptying the dam through power generation at 6X39 megawatt hydel station from Monday night starting with 2 units first. It is also allowing power generation at the 6X40 MW Lower Jurala hydel station in the downstream.
