HYDERABAD: Telangana State Planning Board Vice-Chairman B Vinod Kumar on Sunday reiterated that the resolution of the inter-State river water disputes rested solely with the Centre. He lashed out at BJP leaders, including Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy, for saying Telangana had done nothing on its own in this direction.
Speaking to reporters here, Vinod Kumar said if Kishan, State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar and the remaining two MPs truly want to help Telangana, they should pressure Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat.
They should get a direction to the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal to decide on the water allocation between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. He objected to Kishan saying that the Centre would mediate between the sibling States if both Chief Ministers come to the negotiation table. “It is unbecoming of Kishan Reddy to make objectionable comments against the State government without going into the depths of the issue.
Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who lacks basic understanding of the river water disputes, had asked KCR if he was sleeping for the last six years and wrote to the Jal Shakti Minister seeking resolution of the issue, Vinod Kumar said. He reminded him that since the formation of Telangana, the Chief Minister had been writing to the Centre to resolve the issue. Whenever he was in Delhi, he took up the matter with the top brass of the Central government, he said.
He reiterated that it is the Centre which should take a proactive role as river water disputes came under its ambit and not that of the States. He recalled that then Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao wrote to the Centre on July 14, 2014 -- six weeks after Telangana was formed -- requesting for an early end to the river water disputes. The same day, the then Principal Secretary (Irrigation), SK Joshi, had sent a notice to the Secretary of the Union Water Resources Ministry. Vinod Kumar also referred to TRS MPs raising the issue in the 16th Lok Sabha and pressuring the then Ministers Uma Bharti and Nitin Gadkari to resolve it.
It was unfortunate that when Uma Bharti was trying to end the woes, BJP MPs from Karnataka and Maharashtra created a ruckus in Parliament and prevented her from doing so. Telangana had even moved the Supreme Court after the Centre failed to resolve the issue in a year, in accordance with the Act, yet the Union Government maintained stoic silence.