Reservoir evacuees face uncertain future

Mutrajpalli (Gajwel), Telangana: With three weeks left for polling for the Telangana assembly elections, campaigning is reaching a feverish pitch in Gajwel constituency in Siddipet district, where Bharat Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is up against his former protege Eatala Rajender, who is now with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The buzz generally associated with a high-stakes electoral battle is missing among the people at Mutrajpally village, just about four kilometres away from Gajwel town. The villagers seem diffident, a sense of despair clearly evident amongst them.

Which is strange. All of them have pucca double-bedroom houses – each built on a 250 square yards of plot with a compound wall and gate and good road connectivity. All of them have electricity supply and drinking water connections under Mission Bhagiratha, the flagship programme of the BRS government.

All that they don’t have is work.

In fact, Mutrajpally is not their original village. It is a huge colony constructed for the rehabilitation and resettlement of around 20,000 people from 14 villages that were submerged by the Mallannasagar reservoir constructed as part of the gigantic Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project on Godavari river.

Mallannasagar is the largest artificial water body in India with a capacity to store 50 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) of water lifted from Godavari through the Kaleshwaram scheme. Completed in February 2022 at a cost of ₹9,800 crore, it is aimed at irrigating 11.29 lakh acres of land in Telangana.

The villagers of submerged villages such as Vemulaghat, Pallepahad, Etigadda Kishtapur, Erravelli, Singaram, Banjarupalli and Laxmapur, waged a prolonged legal battle since 2016, seeking higher compensation,