Water sharing: Andhra and Telangana wait for the other to blink first
HYDERABAD/VIJAYAWADA: The gazette notification of Jal Shakti Ministry has gone for a toss. Though the river management boards — KRMB and GRMB — have to manage the irrigation projects from October 14, the projects have not yet been brought under their control.
As Telangana is buying time in handing over the irrigation projects to the boards, Andhra Pradesh issued GOs but asked the officials to ensure that the process of handing over the projects is done simultaneously with Telangana.
The organisational structure should have been in place by August 14 and the seed fund of Rs 800 crore by both the States should have been deposited with the boards by September 14. As the states neither submitted full details of staff pattern nor deposited the seed money so far, the chances of boards taking control of the projects may take longer. After the KRMB sent the board meeting’s resolution copy, the Telangana government issued a GO constituting a seven-member committee of advocates and technical experts to the study the proposals.
“The KRMB proposed to take over power houses too. We vehemently oppose the same. The Krishna water disputes are continuing between the two sibling states. Till the disputes are settled, it may be pointless to hand over the power outlets to be Board,” said the TS officials.
Meanwhile, in a letter to the KRMB chairman, Telangana irrigation engineer-in-chief C Muralidhar Rao said that the power generation at Srisailam was incidental to build storage at Nagarjuna Sagar Project.
“The water released after power generation at Srisailam will flow to Nagarjuna Sagar Project to build the storage and to meet the drinking water, irrigation and industrial requirements of both the states as well as the drinking water needs of Hyderabad. Therefore, power generation at Srisailam is incidental to build storage at NSP,” Muralidhar said in his letter.
AP bats for simultaneous handover of projects
He also wanted the KRMB to modify the summary record of discussions of board’s 14th meeting and informed the board that Telangana agrees to share Krishna waters at a 66:34 ratio between AP and TS respectively, subject to the condition that AP shall not divert more than 34 tmcft of water from Srisailam and not to raise any claim before any forum.
Meanwhile, the AP State Water Resources Department issued an order handing over the major outlets of Srisailam reservoir, sanctioned posts and allied infrastructure in line with the decision taken at the recent KRMB meeting for the phased implementation of the jurisdiction notification.
However, the AP government made it clear that “only simultaneous hand over” along with Telangana will be done, and sent a copy of the order to KRMB also requesting that Jurala reservoir be taken over. The officials concerned were directed to contact their Telangana counterparts, APGENCO and TSGENO and, “...ensure that the handing over of all component of the project is done simultaneously only.” The copy of the order has also been sent to KRMB with a request to take over Jurala, which is on upstream of Srisailam and “affects the inflows to Srisailam”.