Good news from reservoirs, in South better than North

To help counter the distress of disappearing monsoon in July is the position of reservoirs in the country. A good August spell has ensured t...

To help counter the distress of disappearing monsoon in July is the position of reservoirs in the country. A good August spell has ensured that most of the 71 reservoirs are respectably full. The peninsular ones have not had so much water since 2000. The northern ones have still some catching up to do. The only aberration is Andhra Pradesh where reservoirs are still waiting for their share of water.

The North-South divide is evident from the following figures: This year Peninsular reservoirs are 51% of the Full Reservoir Limit (FRL) compared to 38% last year. The Northern ones are 23% of their FRL as compared to 39% last year.

The overall reservoir position is:

• Total live coverage in 71 reservoirs is 55.77 billion cubic metres (BCM) that is 42% of the FRL. It is 110% of last year’s storage and 84% of the average of the last 10 years.

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• There are 15 projects that have storage more than 80%, 17 projects between 50 and 80 per cent and 12 projects having storage more than 30%. There are 27 projects that have storage upto 30% only.

• A basin-wise break-up shows that all the South river basins have had had a healthy spell of rain and are improving by the week with monsoon being active for nearly three weeks now: All the west flowing rivers of the South have 61% of the FRL, Cauvery has 53% and Mahanadi has 56%. Krishna has 51%.

The Ganga basin has only 23% of the FRL capacity, Indus has 31% and Sabarmati has 7%.

• Narmada and Mahi are nearly 60% of their FRls.

• Andhra has five dams — Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar, Sriram Sagar, Somasila and lower Maniar— but all of them have less than 30% per cent of their capacity. The reason is that dams in the upstream of Krishna and Godavari need to be filled first — like Almatti in Karnataka and Jayakwadi in Maharashtra before any water comes to Andhra.

Last week, Andhra was just about trying to catch up with all the Karnataka dams having more than 80% of their storage. Srisailam had 40 per cent more water than it had in the first week of August.

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• Bhakra is seeing one of its lowest levels—it has 27% of its live capacity whereas Pong has 35%. One reason is that these are snow-fed rivers and do not depend on rain. To make matters worse, in both the catchment areas, the rain has still not made up for its long absence in July.

Orissa had a problem of plenty — Hirakud had 40% of its capacity added on in one week because of heavy rains.

The outlook for monsoon for the next week seem good — there is already a low pressure over Eastern Madhya Pradesh and another one building up in Bay of Bengal. Almost the entire country is going to get a fresh spell of rain, specially, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

There are only 9 met divisions that are deficient or scanty out of a total of 36 met sub divisions by the end of last week.

The RJD’s key face and Leader of the Opposition (LoP) Tejashwi Yadav, party supremo Lalu Yadav’s son, will again contest from his stronghold Raghopur.

Amid Mahagathbandhan crisis, RJD unveils list of 143, drops 36 MLAs, focuses on ‘M-Y’

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The RJD, lead player of the Mahagathbandhan, released its full list of 143 candidates for the November Bihar Assembly elections. Its key face Tejashwi Yadav will contest from Raghopur, and 41 sitting MLAs have been renominated. The party has dropped 36 sitting MLAs and fielded young leaders, signaling a bid to consolidate its core Muslim-Yadav vote base. The Congress has fielded 60 candidates.

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