Mr A.P. Jithender Reddy is the floor leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti in the Lok Sabha. He represents Mahbubnagar constituency, one of the 17 Lok Sabha constituencies in Telangana. He spent a quarter century in Oman as an NRI, representing first the construction giant Shapoorji Pallonji in Muscat, and later the National Trading Company. Telangana is the youngest and 29th state in the country, and Mr Reddy speaks with Sayantan Chakravarty, Editor of India Empire, about issues, aspirations and potentialities that are important to this newly carved geographical entity

You represent the largest district of Telangana state, the youngest state in India. It has also a large rural population. How are you planning to meet the aspirations of your voters?

Mahabubnagar district has a population of 14 lakh. Before we achieved Telangana, our district was deprived of water for which we were entitled. The Krishna river flows from Karnataka into Mahabubnagar, it flows for around 250 kms and then goes to Andhra Pradesh. We had the first riparian rights and we were supposed to use 80 thousand million cubic feet (tmc) of water. But after our merger with Andhra Pradesh in 1956, we were deprived of water. AP built a dam by the name of ‘Jurala’ with the capacity of 10 tmc of water. So, instead of Mahabubnagar being irrigated for 15 lakh acres, it was being irrigated for 1 lakh acres. So, we had a fight and we have our own state now. The people used to earlier migrate from Mahabubnagar because there was no water and it was an agricultural district. People migrated to Mumbai, Hyderabad and other parts of the country and took up jobs of coolies. But after the bifurcation of state, our Chief Minister who was aware of the problems of Mahabubnagar announced a project of Rs 32,000 crore for building reservoirs in the districts. This project will help in storing the water that comes from river Krishna and help irrigate 14 lakh acres of land.