Telangana Government lodges strong protest with KRMB

Hyderabad: Taking forward its fight against the unilateral decision of the AP government enhancing water intake capacity from Pothireddypadu Head Regulator and construct Rayalaseema lift irrigation project, the Telangana government on Wednesday made a strong protest before the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB).

Principal Secretary (Irrigation) Rajat Kumar submitted a letter to KRMB chairman RK Gupta and made a detailed presentation on how the move of AP would adversely affect the state of Telangana. He also pointed out that Srisailam being a joint project of the two Telugu states, the AP government has no right to take up the construction of any new project without consulting TS and also without obtaining permission from the Apex body.

Rajat Kumar said that he told the board that the allocation of 512 TMC to Andhra Pradesh and 299 TMC to Telangana in Krishna water was only temporary arrangement. He said that they have demanded the Board to prevent the AP government from going ahead with the projects. The KRMB promised to investigate the issue. He said that Telangana has been demanding 575 TMC in Krishna as the river flows across large distance in the state.

The Telangana government informed that the administrative sanction was accorded by the AP government to various components costing Rs 6,829 crore which include a new project for the installation of a pumping system in Srisailam Reservoir to draw 3 TMC per day to let into the Srisailam Right Main Canal (SRMC). The TS government said that there was no telemetry system to check the drawl of water. The AP has taken undue advantage of it at the PRP Head Regulator and indiscriminately diverting water outside the basin without any proper accounting.

The telemetry system has not been established despite a clear decision of the Central government in 2016 and repeated requests in subsequent KRMB meetings. Andhra Pradesh has consistently been resorting to clandestine diversion of water outside the basin through the Pothireddypadu Head Regulator and was not presenting the facts even before the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal-II (KWDT-I1), it added.

Andhra Pradesh was permitted to create a conveyance system of 11,150 cusecs in terms of an inter-state agreement which was seriously contested by other riparian States before KWDT-II. But it has suppressed its illegal acts of enhancing the diversion capacity of the PRP Head Regulator to 44,000 cusecs and creation of a power channel to divert an additional 5,000 cusecs, TS officials told the board.

Chairman of the committee Vijay Saran asked both the states to give full information about the usage of Krishna River water. He promised to the TS officials to take the issue of Pothireddypadu to the notice of the Centre.