Telangana Government pitches for clearance of projects on river Godavari

Hyderabad: The Telangana government has made a strong pitch for the establishment of Tribunal to resolve the long pending river Krishna water disputes between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and fast clearances for the projects taken up on river Godavari.

State Chief secretary Somesh Kumar and Irrigation officials participated in the video conference conducted by the Union Jal Shakti ministry officials and discussed about the implementation of gazette notification on the jurisdiction of KRMB and GRMB ( Krishna and Godavari River management Boards) in the maintenance of projects in the two Telugu states.

The chief secretary requested the Central authorities to take immediate action in the constitution of Tribunal as the State was already losing its share of the water from Krishna. Union Secretary to Jal Shakti Pankaj Kumar informed the State officials that the Centre was actively pursuing the matter with Law Department. Soon after receipt of opinion from law department, the matter would be resolved .

Somesh informed that Telangana government has submitted six detailed project reports (DPRs) of Sita Rama Lift Irrigation Scheme (LIS), Sammakka Sagar Project (Thupakulagudem Project), Mukteshwar(Chinna Kaleshwaram), Chowtpally Hanumanth Reddy LIS, Modikuntavagu Project and Channaka –Korata Barage on Godavari River to the CWC in September this year. The State chief secretary requested to give clearances for all projects.

He also referred to another five projects in Godavari Basin such as Ramappa-Pakala link project, Kaleswaram Project (Additional 1TMC per day), Kandakurthy LI Scheme, Gudem LIS and PV Narsimharao Kanthanapally Barage which were wrongly included in the unapproved list of projects in gazette notification of GRMB and asked the Jal Shakti officials to delete them from the list of unapproved projects.

The chief secretary also observed that as there are no major issues and no common projects for regulation between the two states regarding irrigation projects on Godavari river, there is no need of GRMB. The Union Secretary also assured the Telangana government that it would look into the issues raised by the State government on the illegal irrigation projects taken up by Andhra Pradesh on the Krishna River.