Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao called on his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai on Friday and invited him for the inauguration of the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project on June 21. KCR flew to Mumbai to meet Fadnavis and personally invite him to be the chief guest at the event.

KCR also met Maharashtra Governor Vidyasagar Rao and extended him an invite for the same. Fadnavis accepted the invitation and expressed his consent to attend the inauguration of the project.

The Telangana Chief Minister has also decided to invite his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. According to a statement issued by the Chief Minister's Office, he would visit Vijayawada shortly to invite Jagan to the event.

Built on the Godavari river, the project is expected to change the face of Telangana. The foundation stone for the project was laid in 2016 after Telangana and Maharashtra resolved their dispute over sharing of Godavari waters. The agreement between the two states cleared the decks for the project.

Being built at a cost of about Rs 80,499 crore, the project will divert 180 TMC of water to irrigate 7.38 lakh hectares.

The project requires a total of  37,852 hectares of land that comprises 3,168.13 hectares of forest land, 34,684 hectares of private land with a total submergence area of 18,302 hectares. The project will also submerge 174.37 hectares of land in Maharashtra. 

IANS inputs