Former minister Dr. Lakshma Reddy accused the Congress government on Saturday of failing to harness Krishna and Godavari waters, while paddy crops withered across Midjil mandal in Mahabubnagar district. He made the charge during a field visit to farms that were already lost.

Standing in the fields of Tulsiram Naik thanda, within the limits of Mangaligadda thanda, Reddy inspected the dried paddy of farmer Somla Naik. The farmer said the crop was ruined even though his borewell still had water. The real problem, he said, was power. Supply was poor, the voltage was too low, and the whole crop dried out before it could be harvested.

Naik said he had put around Rs 1 lakh into the crop. Nothing came back to him. His anger was simple and direct: the water was there, but the electricity was not.

Blame over water

Reddy said the problem was not limited to one village. Everywhere he went, he said, crops were drying up. He pinned the blame on the state government’s handling of river water. Krishna and Godavari flows had arrived, he said, but the Revanth Reddy government failed to store and use them properly.

He said the BRS had protested, demanding that the incoming Krishna and Godavari waters be filled into reservoirs and tanks. According to Reddy, the government did not respond to those demands. The result, he argued, is a drought that should never have reached this point.

“It is a shame that a chief minister says, ‘We cannot give power, we cannot give irrigation water, do not sow crops, and stage plays in villages to make people forget the drought.’”

That remark became the sharpest line of his visit. Reddy called the statement shameful and said it showed how little the government was willing to do for farmers facing failed crops.

The Palamuru lift argument

Reddy returned repeatedly to the Palamuru lift irrigation scheme. He said the previous BRS government had completed 90 percent of the project and had called tenders for the canals. Had those tenders been finalised and the work completed, he argued, farmers in the Mahabubnagar belt would not be facing this kind of loss.

He framed the issue as a question of priorities. Water was available, in his telling, and the infrastructure to move it had already been started. What was missing was the political will to finish it.

A cross-border water comparison

Reddy also drew a sharp comparison with Andhra Pradesh. He accused Revanth Reddy of failing to bring Krishna water to his own district, which he said lies 70 km away. In the same breath, he pointed to Krishna water being taken from Srisailam to Kuppam, the constituency of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.

For farmers on both sides of the border, the episode underlines how the Krishna basin remains a political flashpoint. Water flowing toward one constituency became, in Reddy’s argument, proof of what Telangana’s own districts were being denied.

What comes next

The reporting so far is built on a single field visit, one farmer’s account, and Reddy’s own political charges. The state government’s response to the specific allegations is not part of the material available here. What is clear is the human cost. A farmer invested in a crop, watched it die, and is now left with a debt he cannot yet measure.

Reddy’s visit has turned a local crop failure into a statewide political argument. Farmers in Midjil mandal are still waiting for water, power and answers. The blame game is loud. The paddy in the field is already gone.