The proposed balancing reservoir near Navali village in Koppal district was once again mentioned in the State Budget, continuing a familiar pattern in which the project figures in successive budget speeches without any concrete progress on the ground.
Presenting the Budget in the Legislative Assembly on March 6, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that alternative measures were being considered to address the loss of water storage capacity in the Tungabhadra reservoir caused by decades of silt accumulation. Among the options under consideration is the construction of a balancing reservoir near Navali in Koppal district.
The Budget stated that efforts would be intensified to implement a suitable alternative scheme in consultation with neighbouring States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and with the concurrence of the Tungabhadra Board.
The project has been proposed as a long-term measure to compensate for the gradual loss of storage capacity in the Tungabhadra reservoir near Hosapete in Vijayanagara district. Over the decades, large quantities of silt have accumulated on the reservoir bed, substantially reducing the volume of water that can be stored for irrigation.
Estimates suggest that more than 30 tmcft of silt has accumulated in the reservoir over the past several decades, diminishing the storage capacity of the dam and affecting water availability in the command areas.
Farmers in the districts of Raichur, Koppal, Ballari and Vijayanagara, which depend heavily on Tungabhadra waters for irrigation, have been demanding measures to address the problem, either by dredging the reservoir or by creating additional storage to offset the loss caused by silt accumulation.
However, desilting a reservoir as large as Tungabhadra has been considered technically complex and economically unviable. The construction of a balancing reservoir near Navali has, therefore, been proposed as an alternative to restore the lost storage capacity.
The project, however, involves inter-State dimensions. The Tungabhadra, a tributary of the Krishna river, is part of an inter-State irrigation system. The Tungabhadra reservoir is jointly managed by Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Any proposal to construct a new reservoir, therefore, requires consultations with the neighbouring States, apart from approval from the Tungabhadra Board, which comprises representatives of the three States and is headed by a person appointed by the Union Government.
Despite these complexities, the proposal to construct a balancing reservoir near Navali has been mentioned in several budgets over the years. Yet, the project has remained largely at the stage of an announcement, with no specific allocation or timeline for implementation.
Farmers’ leaders in the Tungabhadra command area say the repeated references to the project in budget speeches without tangible action have raised doubts about the seriousness of successive governments in pursuing it.
Chamarasa Malipatil, a farmers’ leader from Raichur who is familiar with the issue, said the proposal had been mentioned repeatedly over the years but little progress had been made on the ground.
“For the last several years, governments have been repeating the announcement about constructing the Navali Balancing Reservoir in their budget speeches. But nothing has moved on the ground. The people’s representatives of the region, cutting across party lines, should be ashamed of this. They have been using the issue only for electoral gains. Earlier, both the Congress and BJP governments had prepared detailed project reports, and now the Siddaramaiah government is again saying that it will consult Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. I don’t know how many more years the government wants just to keep consulting and discussing the project,” Mr. Malipatil told The Hindu.
Published – March 06, 2026 01:09 pm IST
