Telangana government demands stoppage of Veligonda, implementation of KWDT provisions

Hyderabad: The Telangana Government has demanded the Krishna River Management Board to stop the Veligonda project taken up by Andhra Pradesh and implementation of the provisions of the Krishna water Dispute Tribunal-1 without any further delay from the current water year.

In a letter to KRMB, Engineer-in-Chief (Irrigation) Muralidhar said the State had been requesting the board to account for the water drawn from domestic and municipal water supply as per the tribunal final order. Due to delay, the State lost its share of about 31,952 tmcft per year since AP bifurcation. He said the KRMB has to implement provision of the interstate agreement and KDWT-1 final order with regard to measuring consumptive use of drinking water supply drawls also. Muralidhar observed that AP, Maharastra and Karnataka had reached an inter-State agreement and submitted jointly to the tribunal that only 20 per cent of water drawn for domestic supply should be measured as consumptive use.

In another letter, the EIC said the government had been expressing strong objection to the projects diverting water outside the basin from the Srisailam reservoir. "Taking up of surplus-based projects, including Veligonda would be detrimental to the interests of projects of Telangana serving acute drought prone and fluoride affected in the basin, apart from the settled ayacuts of the Nagarjunasagar command area downstream of Srislailam project and drinking water needs Hyderabad city," he said, requesting the board to communicate the Ministry of Jal Shakthi about the project.