Hydro-mechanical engineer Kannaiah Naidu, who saved Tungabhadra water, honoured with Rajyotsava award

Hydro-mechanical engineer from Hyderabad Mr. Kannaiah Naidu, who led a team of experts that successfully replaced the damaged Crest Gate No. 19 of Tungabhadra Reservoir with a temporary stoplog gate amid heavy current in August has been honoured with the Rajyotsava Award for 2024.

Hydro-mechanical engineer from Hyderabad Kannaiah Naidu, who led a team of experts that successfully replaced the damaged Crest Gate No. 19 of Tungabhadra Reservoir with a temporary stoplog gate amid heavy current in August has been honoured with the Rajyotsava Award for 2024.

He received the award in Horanadu/foreign category along with two others, Tumbe Mohinuddin from the United Arab Emirates and Chandrashekhar Nayak from United States of America.

Crest Gate No. 19 of Tungabhadra Reservoir was washed away in August this year when the reservoir was full and holding 105.788 tmcft of water. Farmers in the Tungabhadra command area in Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh who were dependent on Tungabhadra water for irrigating their lands were worried about losing the water from the dam.

After Gate No. 19 was washed away in the current, the dam authorities opened all the remaining 32 gates to gradually increase the spillway discharge to the rate of 1.4 lakh cusecs to reduce the pressure on the damaged gate.

The experts from Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad who rushed to the spot the next day initially thought of emptying the reservoir by half to take up gate replacement work. However, the arrival of Mr. Naidu changed everything. Attempts began to replace the gate amid the current in a bid to save as much of water as possible in the dam. After the round-the-clock work for a week, Mr. Naidu’s team was successful in installing a temporary stoplog gate in place of the damaged gate on the evening of August 17.

Five elements each measuring four feet in height and 60 feet in width were placed one on the other to create the temporary stoplog gate in place of the damaged Crest Gate 19. The reservoir had lost over 35 tmcft of water by then.

The reservoir, however, received good inflow after the damaged gate was fixed owing to the good rainfall in its catchment area, especially in Sahyadri Range (Western Ghats) and was full by September third week.