Votaries of Lower Painganga project seek Maha Guv's help

Maharashtra Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao has assured proponents of inter-state Lower Painganga river irrigation project to take forward their long-pending demand for construction of the dam.
"The Governor has shown a positive attitude towards our demand and he assured to hold a meeting within a week to chalk out a strategy to launch the project," Shivajirao Moghe, former Social Justice Minister and one of the votaries of the project, said here today.
A delegation led by Moghe and R Ramesh, former MP from Adilabad in Telangana, called on the Governor at his Nagpur residence yesterday.
The winter session of state legislature is currently underway in Nagpur.

The delegation sought Governor's intervention in putting the stalled project on track.
"Rao has assured us of his assistance to take up the issue with the Union government if needed," he said.

The project has been pending since it was first proposed in 1975 due to various reasons, Moghe said.
He said the project would cater to the irrigation needs of thousands of farmers in tribal belt of Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Nanded in Maharashtra, and Adilabad in neighbouring Telangana.
The project will irrigate over 5 lakh acres of land in Vidarbha and Telangana.
The agreement to build the dam under the project was signed by the then Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra governments in 1975.

However, the project could never take off, apparently due to unresolved issues like acquisition of land and rehabilitation of displaced farmers.
In 2009, the estimated cost of the project was revised to Rs 10,429 crore, several times more than the initial one.