Upper Krishna Project

The Upper Krishna Project was conceived by the Government of Karnataka across the Krishna River to provide irrigation to the drought prone areas of Bijapur District, Bagalkote, Gulbarga District, Raichur District and Koppal District. The project has been taken up in two stages. While Stage I is complete, Stage II is partially complete and work is still going on.

The benefits of this project include

• On completion, the project will irrigate 6,220 square kilometres of lands in the districts of Gulbarga District, Raichur District, Bagalkot District & Bijapur District.
• A hydel-power generation plant of installed capacity of 297 MW has been contemplated at Almatti. It is estimated to generate about 672 million units annually. This work has been assigned to KPTCL, a Karnataka Government Company.
• About 530 km length of new village and link roads will be constructed, while improvements to about 70 km of existing roads will be done.
• Increased production of food-grains and cash crops in the command area of the UKP is expected to add an annual income of about Rs.6000 Crores to the Country’s economy. It will usher in alround prosperity and growth to the otherwise draught-prone and poverty sticken districts of the north eastern part of Karnataka.
• The project envisages to provide drinking water to 18 urban and hundreds of rural centres.

Overview

Stage II

Upper Krishna Project Stage-II is a multi purpose project to utilise 54 TMC of water and to irrigate 1970 square kilometres of land and generate 672 million units of energy per year. The projects included in Stage-II are as follows.