Ysangi crop season enters critical phase
Hyderabad:With the Yasangi crop season entering a critical phase and increasing demands from farmers for water supply to their crops, the irrigation department on Tuesday requested Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari to instruct the police to provide patrolling along irrigation canals and channels to prevent any drawing of water directly from the canals for "uanuthorised" ayacut.
The request was made during a video conference chaired by the Chief Secretary. In the meeting, she discussed various issues including drinking water supply, water for standing crops and power supply with the district collectors, officials from irrigation and power departments.
“The next three weeks are critical for the standing crops and the aim is to ensure ayacut of all the projects receive water along the reaches of the canals, particularly farmers whose lands lie in the tail end of the distribution system,” an irrigation department official said.
With day temperatures going up, there could be incidents where farmers might use portable pumps to draw water directly from the canals when it is not their turn affecting the downstream supplies and hence a request was made for patrolling by police to prevent such incidents, the official explained.
The irrigation department on Tuesday also said it was implementing an "on-off" water release schedule – supply from a few to 10 days and a break for an equal duration - for the Yasangi crops under 55 large, medium and small irrigation projects in the state to provide irrigation for a total of 33,49,100 acres across the state. Including the ayacut catered to small tanks and lift irrigation schemes, the total ayacut this crop season comes to 42,32,692 acres.
