Naidu’s Jala Harathi at Payakaraopeta sends Godavari down the Polavaram left canal

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on 2 September 2026 released Godavari water toward North Andhra through the Polavaram Left Main Canal at PL Puram village in Payakaraopeta mandal of Anakapalli district, offering Jala Harathi before the gates were opened.

The locked public figures for this ceremony are narrow and must stay narrow. The canal work is costed at ₹4,192 crore. It is described as irrigating 4 lakh acres, supplying drinking water to 9.23 lakh people, and meeting industrial need in East Godavari, Kakinada, Konaseema, Anakapalli and Visakhapatnam. About ₹3,000 crore of that canal spend, Naidu said, fell during his governance. This cutting uses those numbers only. It does not mix other desks’ acre or drinking-water counts.

He tied the release to Uttarandhra Sujala Sravanthi, spoke of 12 projects by 2028, and of 36 projects worth ₹35,000 crore in the next three years. He claimed Pattiseema and Purusothapatnam as completions under him, and framed a vision of Uttamandhra / Unnatandhra. The religious geography of the speech ran from Annavaram Satyanarayana Swamy’s blessings and water to Anakapalli, to a promise of being near Simhadri Appanna at Simhachalam next year, later Suryanarayana Swamy at Arasavalli, a Godavari–Vamsadhara interlink, and Jala Harathi to every acre through a Godavari–Krishna interlink.

He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the merger of seven mandals in Telangana with Andhra Pradesh, without which, he said, Polavaram would remain a dream. On the project’s history he said 72 percent of Polavaram works were completed by 2019, that the previous government neglected the work and that the diaphragm wall was damaged, and that work accelerated after he assumed office. He also greeted Deputy Chief Minister K. Pawan Kalyan on his birthday from the canal stage.

The political counter on the same day was a YSRCP attack that Naidu answered in the same breath: terror and land encroachments in Visakhapatnam; a charge that the previous side had not spent ₹500 crore on Uttarandhra but had spent ₹500 crore on a Rushikonda palace. On a data-centre scare he said five data centres need 5 TMC, that he was ready to bring 50 or 100 TMC, and that the canal’s capacity is 2 TMC a day. He accused the Opposition of credit-chori on Bhogapuram, Veligonda and the Left Canal.

A Jala Harathi is ritual and a press conference at once. Opening gates at PL Puram does not, in the locked record of this filing, announce that the main Polavaram dam is finished. It announces a left-canal release costed at ₹4,192 crore, an irrigation claim of 4 lakh acres, a drinking-water claim of 9.23 lakh people, and a political fight over who built what in North Andhra.

For farmers in the named coastal districts, the test is whether water actually arrives on the 4 lakh acres and whether the 9.23 lakh drinking-water claim becomes a tap, not a stage number. For industry in Kakinada and Visakhapatnam, the 2 TMC-a-day capacity claim is the engineering sentence that must survive summer. For the Opposition, Rushikonda and credit-chori remain the counter-narrative. For this edition, the established event is the 2 September ceremony at PL Puram, the ₹4,192 crore / 4 lakh acres / 9.23 lakh people triad, the ₹3,000 crore spend-under-him claim, and the list of temple and interlink promises attached to the gates.