‘Collapsed’ Kaleshwaram, now doing the heavy lift
Reverse-pumping to SRSP is running through the very link the BJP–Congress chorus wrote off. The paperwork and the water both say hello.
The reverse-pumping route carries water from Kaleshwaram into the SRSP network.
Congress and the BJP spent months performing last rites for Kaleshwaram. Meanwhile, the same Kaleshwaram-linked route is pushing water upstream into the SRSP network — exactly what it was built to do.
Start with the record, not the spin. Telangana authorised reverse-pumping along the SRSP Flood Flow Canal by building three pump houses — Rampur (Jagitial), Rajeshwar Rao Peta (Jagitial) and Mupkal (Nizamabad). According to TSTRANSCO’s order, the state cleared lifting “1 TMC per day for 60 days” to supplement SRSP ayacut, with eight 6.5 MW motors at Rampur alone and an approved 156 MW across the three stations. That is a design, not a slogan.
The CAG’s Kaleshwaram chapter spells the link out: Link-II was designed to drop water into the SRSP Flood Flow Canal beyond the Kakatiya Canal. It is the project’s planned recoup route, not an afterthought. You can’t eulogise a bridge in the morning and drive over it in the evening.
And yes, water has moved on this path. February–March 2026 reporting recorded Godavari water lifted at Nandi and Gayatri (Kaleshwaram pump houses), diverted into the SRSP Flood Flow Canal, and three Rampur motors running around 4,350 cusecs with about 0.30 TMC moved on a day. Officials were the source for the figures in those reports; the state has not published a granular run log with hours and totals.
Two things at once can be true, and are: auditors can flag design and planning questions, and the reverse-pumping spine can still deliver water as built. What does not hold is the national-party theatre that declared the whole project a corpse while standing on its functioning limb.
If the BJP- and Congress-led commentators want to argue the link doesn’t exist, they can start by taking it out of the TSTRANSCO order and the CAG report. Until then, spare Telangana the obituary and own the U-turn.