Telangana stages walkout from KRMB meet
Chairman of Krishna River Management Board MP Singh holding a meeting with Telangana and Andhra Pradesh officials at Jala Souda in Khairatabad in Hyderabad on Wednesday
Hyderabad: Unhappy with the stand taken by the KRMB objecting to hydel power generation at Srisailam power plant by Telangana, the State irrigation officials staged a walkout from the river board meeting after about five hours of deliberations and arguments.
It has now been decided that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao would meet the Union Jal Shakti Minister, if possible, on Thursday and present a report detailing the stand of the Telangana government in this regard.
KRMB Chairman MP Singh reportedly asked the TS officials to stop power generation saying that it would be allowed after meeting the requirements of the water in the basin.
TS Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation) Rajat Kumar took exception to this. The officials explained to the board that there were no such conditions and rules which stipulated that TS should stop hydel power generation when the project received inflows from river Krishna. He also raised objection towards the 'illegal' projects being constructed by Andhra Pradesh. He accused the board of failing to stop water diversion by the AP government and installation of telemetries in Krishna Basin.
The AP's demand to give priority to irrigation and drinking water needs was invalid as the Srisailam project was constructed for hydel power generation exclusively. The TS government clarified that it has no objection to power generation by Andhra Pradesh at Sagar hydel unit.
The officials pitched strongly for 50:50 ratio share of Krishna waters between the two Telugu States. After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, the then Union government allocated 512 TMC of water to AP and 219 TMC to Telangana for the year 2015-16 only. Now, all the projects under the Krishna basin were completed and the requirement of water has been increased manifold in Telangana.
Hence the water sharing should be in the ratio of 50:50 between the two States, they argued. The Telangana government was also unhappy with the KRMB decision of not stopping the lifting of water from the Pothireddypadu Head Regulator. They said AP had already lifted 63.5 TMC of water without allocations. The irrigation officials asked the KRMB to stop diversion of water from Pothireddypadu and Handri Neeva respecting the Bachawat Tribunal Award.
As they felt that the KRMB was ignoring all their pleas and was 'siding' with AP, they staged a walk-out.