Bhagiratha is a project for safe drinking water for every village and city household in Telangana State, with a budget of ₹43,791 crores. The project is a brainchild of Telangana Chief Minister, K. Chandrashekar Rao, that aims to provide piped water to 2.32 crore people in 20 lakh households in urban and 60 lakhs in rural areas of Telangana. The ambitious project will supply clean drinking water to all households in the state through water sourced from River Godavari and River Krishna. The bulk supply is expected to be completed by May 2018 and intra-village, intra-locality works will be completed by December 2018.
History
Named after a great king, Bhagiratha, who brought the River Ganga, a humongous task, to Earth from the heavens. The inspiration for the project was drawn as few of the habitations relied on contaminated groundwater. In Nalgonda district that is drought-prone, 973 villages with high fluoride content that leads to dreadful disease, fluorosis. A similar project, Maneru Manchineella Pathakam, was conceived and completed by K. Chandrashekhar Rao, when he was the MLA for Siddipet Assembly Constituency in 1996-97, at a cost of ₹100 crores. The water was sourced from Lower Manair Dam and supplied to all households in 180 villages across Siddipeta constituency. The Chief Minister vowed on the floor of the assembly in 2016 that he will not seek votes in 2019 if the water project is not completed by 2018. However, the project is not anywhere close to completion even by mid 2019. The project was launched by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi at Komatibanda village, Medak district in Gajwel constituency on 6 August 2016. The other dignitaries were, the Chief Minister of Telangana, K Chandrashekar Rao.
The entire project is divided into 26 segments, comprising 25,000 habitations, at an estimated cost of ₹42,853 crores. The Krishna and Godavari rivers and existing reservoirs will be interlinked to collect, reserve and supply treated drinking water in the state, to every household in over 25,000 villages and 65 towns. The target is to provide 100 liters drinking water per person in rural areas, and 150 liters per person in urban areas. Around 4 TMC is planned for industrial use. The project had to take 13,000 permissions from various departments like railways, defense, national highways, forest, irrigation, panchayat raj, roads & buildings, etc. Telangana Drinking Water Supply Corporation was established by the government to implement Mission Bhagiratha. There are 59 overhead and ground-level tanks. 40 TMC water is sourced from tanks and reservoirs, the area range from 100 acres to 10,000 acres. The piping system runs through 1.697 lakh kilometers. The electricity required is 182 megawatts.
Maintenance
The project Contractor is to take care of the maintenance of the entire water network for 10 years, at no additional cost to the government.
Water purification
The 150 water treatment plants, 62 pumping stations, 35,573 Overhead service reservoirs, 27 intake wells are set up. The electric motors, pumping systems were sourced from BHEL with advanced technology
