Andhra Pradesh fires salvo at Krishna River Management Board for favouring Telangana

Amaravati: Engineer-in-Chief of Irrigation of Andhra Pradesh Narayana Reddy on Wednesday fired yet another salvo at the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) protesting over the "injustice being meted to Andhra Pradesh" vis-a-vis its water disputes with Telangana State.

The letter written at the instruction of Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy draws the Board's attention to the issues raised by Andhra Pradesh in the past and points out that none of the concerns were being addressed. In fact, the KRMB was "more sympathetic towards Telangana" despite the latter's unjustified claims and overuse of the river waters.

It had become a habit for the KRMB to magnify Telangana objections and minimise AP's concerns, the letter said.

Telangana was diverting Krishna water away from Andhra Pradesh in the name of producing power at Srisailam power plant, yet there was no tab on the same by the KRMB, the letter said. Repeated requests of AP to regulate power production by Telangana was yielding no result at all.

While this partiality was allowed in favour of Telangana, the same Board would not tolerate use of 0.517 tmc ft of water from Pothireddypadu to benefit the parched throats of Rayalaseema, the letter assailed.

The ENC reiterated the AP Government demand that 66 tmc ft of water be allowed to be additionally drawn as the floods brought in copious amounts of water to Srisailam in the last few days.