by Pankaj Yadav

KARIMNAGAR, India, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Claimed to be the world's biggest lift irrigation system, the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) is on the verge of completion in India's southern state of Telangana to irrigate a whopping 3.7 million acres of agriculture land.

The state is prone to farmers' suicides for lack of income. According to official figures, the land-locked state witnessed as many as 632 farmers suicides in 2016. Though the figure has decreased by more than half from 1,358 suicides in the previous year, most of these suicides were triggered by crops failure, drought and other socio-economic reasons.

The KLIS has been designed to use several underground pumping stations of 139 MW capacity (90 cubic meters per second) to lift water as high as 115 meters, reportedly not in use anywhere in the world so far.

A total of over 4,000 engineers and 25,000 laborers work round-the-clock in three different shifts to pull off the project in three years' time. The first phase is expected to be operational by end of July.

The water will be pumped out of river Godavari and transported in a direction reversed to the river's natural flow, to be made available for agriculture lands, including large barren stretches located at a height of up to 600 meters. Water will be pumped out and lifted at various stages with the help of pumping stations strategically located at different heights, before it reaches the desired destination.

Besides constructing 1,529 km of gravity canals, 203 km of underground tunnels will be dug for water flow. Three barrages are being constructed - one across the Godavari river below the confluence of the river Pranahita at Medigadda near Kaleshwaram village, and the other two at Annaram and Sundilla between Medigadda and the Sripada Yellampally parts of the project.

Indian government's Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited and a private infra company, the Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL), have successfully installed the "Ramadugu Pumping Station" at 330 meters deep inside the ground in Karimnagar district, one of the stages of the KLIS.

Pumping stations' equipment has been specially imported from a Chinese company, Hubei Hongcheng General Machinery Company Limited, besides others in Finland, Japan, and Switzerland, said state government sources.

MEIL director Srinivas Reddy said, "We will start using five out of total seven motors fitted 330 meters under-ground in the package-8 of the KLIS in the next two months. The package-8 of the project has the biggest underground pumping station in the world and is an engineering marvel of its own kind. We have three underground surge pools of over 60 meters height here."

Once lifted, the river water would be dispatched to agricultural lands in the "upper" parts of the state through open canals and underground tunnels.

Presently the river water gets drained out through the lower parts of the state, only to fall into the Bay of Bengal without benefiting the farming community in the upper parts of Telangana.

"Once we make available adequate quantity of water to farmers in upper reaches, we will make farmers get better incomes," the state's Irrigation Minister Harish Rao said when addressing the media at one of the KLIS sites in Karimnagar district.

"We will form organizations to collect their produce and give them good prices. We aim to be the largest exporters of fisheries by making adequate water supply through KLIS to nearly 44,000 ponds and lakes in the state for fishing activities," he added.

The minister also said the state government's ultimate aim is to provide irrigation water for 10 million acres of land and turn around the farmers' socio-economic status by educating them about latest farming techniques after getting inputs from different national and international agencies.

Besides meeting agricultural needs in the state, KLIS will also provide drinking water to cities, including the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.