Tourist washed away in Nagarjuna Sagar Dam outflow

One tourist was washed away in the water left from the Nagarjuna Sagar dam on Monday while he along with his friends were enjoying the scenic beauty of Krishna river water gushing from 20 gates of the massive irrigation project.

The person was later identified as 41-year-old Narasimham from Zaheerabad of Telangana state. Narasimham took several photos along with his friends before getting down into the water which is alarmingly fierce and swirling. Efforts to save him from the waters proved futile.

With the Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir brimming with copious inflows 33140 cusecs water has been diverted through the powerhouse on the left bank and another 29022 cusecs from the right bank powerhouse. Similarly 28,000 cusecs to Pothireddypadu head regulator to Rayalaseema, 2363 cusecs to Handrail Neeva and 735 cusecs to Muchumarri.

Meanwhile, downstream at Pulichintala revenue authorities have started vacating villages earmarked for submergence of the project expecting heavy inflows from Sagar by early hours of Tuesday. Even though the Pulichintala project capacity is more than 40 tmc, submergence starts even when the reservoir reached 10 tmc capacities.

Meanwhile, heavy inflows from Maharashtra and Karnataka into Jurala, Nagarjunasagar, Srisailam and Pulichintala are continuing. As a result, 10 gates out of 30 at the Srisailam project were lifted to let the water downstream into Sagar. Dam engineers are expecting an inflow of 10 lakh cusecs of water by Monday night. The water level at Srisailam reservoir stood at 885 feet against the full capacity of 878 feet.

To witness the heavy inflows, hundreds of revellers from Hyderabad and many parts of the state arrived at the project site creating traffic snarls in 43 km long ghat road leading to Srisailam. A record number of 1.5 lakh devotees had darshan at the Srisailam temple during the weekend.