Two things make this more than a routine ribbon-cutting. The first is the fluoride angle: the target belt suffers from high fluoride concentration in groundwater, which causes dental and skeletal fluorosis, so supplying 1,657 habitations with surface water is a public-health intervention as much as an irrigation one. The second is that Veligonda is a surplus-water project. It is designed to capture Krishna floodwater that would otherwise run to the sea during the monsoon, which is how it fits within existing inter-state allocations on a river whose waters have long been disputed between the basin states. The cost side deserves equal attention in an answer: the reservoir submerges 11 villages, and rehabilitation of over 6,110 families was still being completed as Phase-I opened, with 1,115 families outstanding - the standard displacement-versus-benefit trade-off of large storage projects.

Phase-I stores water and delivers the first tranche of irrigation. The ayacut - the command area actually served - expands only when Phase-II completes the distribution network, at which point water reaches nine Assembly constituencies. The proposed constituency-wise ayacut includes Kanigiri at about 1,00,400 acres, Markapur at 82,900 acres, Yerragondapalem at 66,300 acres, Udayagiri at 63,000 acres, Giddalur at 59,100 acres, Darsi at 23,000 acres and Kondepi at 4,400 acres. This staging is typical of large irrigation projects: the headworks and storage come first and the last-mile canals decide how much of the promised benefit materialises.