Hyderabad: The Telangana government is planning to bring an ordinance soon for the speedy implementation of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s pet scheme ‘Telangana Water Grid project’.

This is to ensure that there is no delay in acquiring lands and in getting approvals from various departments to lay pipelines for the 1.26 lakh kilometre long project aimed at providing safe drinking water to each and every household in the state.

Mr Rao has mooted the idea of bringing an ordinance to this effect at a high-level review meeting on Sunday.

However, officials expressed doubts whether such an ordinance would stand the legal scrutiny in case the affected parties, who may lose lands, approach courts, challenging the unilateral acquisition.

Following the meeting, panchayat raj minister K.T. Rama Rao said everybody present in the meeting felt that there was a need to bring an ordinance to complete the project on time.

Though Mr Rao set a deadline of four years to complete the massive project with an expenditure of Rs 25,000 crore, he feels that it could be finished in two years provided the officials work with sincerity and there are no ‘administrative and procedural hurdles’.

The state government wants to bring an Ordinance now, while the Act will be brought in the Budget Session of the Legislative Assembly during February-March.

The execution of the project requires approvals from about a dozen departments at various levels such as forests, revenue, panchayat raj, roads and buildings etc. and any delay on the part of any department would affect the entire project.

The ordinance will ensure speedy approvals and hassle-free land acquisition, said a source. The Water Grid project remains the most important project among all the other schemes for the TRS government with the CM himself making a statement in the recent Assembly Session that the party will not contest the next Assembly elections in 2019, if it fails to deliver the project on time.

Mr Rama Rao said that the project would consume 200 MW of power for pumping the water from a dozen reservoirs and a separate sub-station will be built for the purpose.