Switch on Kannepalli, answer later
BRS’s Jagadish Reddy says the Congress government is starving fields of water and power. The data we found shows risk of a dry kharif; the Congress’s answer is missing because it hasn’t given one.
The questions on Kannepalli’s operation remain unanswered.
BRS MLA G. Jagadish Reddy used a Telangana Bhavan presser on July 30 to accuse the Congress government of throttling irrigation water and farm power for politics, and demanded that Kannepalli pumps be switched on. The remarks were recorded as his allegations, not findings, by a Telugu daily that covered the event. According to that report, he also challenged the government’s line on Annaram, Sundilla and Kaleshwaram, and asked why water wasn’t being lifted when inflows rose.
Here’s what is on the public record from outside the BRS presser. Telangana’s own contingency assessment this month flagged below-normal rain risk and tight storages for kharif — a real supply crunch to plan for, not a reason to go silent about operations. A district bulletin two days earlier logged Jurala receiving around 32,000 cusecs and releasing roughly 30,700 cusecs downstream — context, not proof of deliberate non-lifting. The state Agriculture portal lists reservoir status snapshots, but it does not publish a July 30 orderbook that would settle who chose not to pump, when and why. Power-sector filings confirm Yadadri’s staged commissioning and capacities; they do not tell us which units the Congress government actually had running that day.
The specific charges — a conspiracy against farmers, a 200 TMC Godavari wash to sea, coal starved and units idled to dodge procurement — are attributed political claims in that report and need the government’s documents to stand or fall. The BJP-led Centre’s daily outage sheets we could access are months older and no help to the Congress government’s case this week. Telangana’s telemetry datasets exist; the Congress hasn’t bothered to point to them.
So the ball is where it should be: with the Congress government in Telangana. If Annaram and Sundilla are “fine”, cite the Council record and the safety clearances. If Kannepalli cannot run, publish the engineering bar and the date it changes. If Jurala couldn’t lift, show the restriction and the demand curve. Until then, the Congress government has chosen the quiet route — and farmers can’t irrigate with that.