TG govt complains to KRMB: AP spending Rs 47,776 cr on many ‘illegal’ projects
Hyderabad: The Telangana government has complained to the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) against the construction of ‘illegal projects’ costing Rs 47,776 crore by the Andhra Pradesh government. The State Engineer-in-Chief (Irrigation) submitted a report to this effect, along with a letter demanding the Krishna Board to stall the projects immediately.
The State government has raised strong objections to the enhancement of capacity of the Pothireddypadu head regulator and drawing of water from Srisailam for the Handri Niva Sujala Sravanti, Galeru Nagari, Srisailam Right Bank Canal (SRBC) and the Tungabhadra projects.
Engineer-in-Chief Ramesh Babu said that AP was constructing the “illegal” projects to draw at least 114 TMC of water out of the Krishna Basin without specific allocations in violation of the provisions of the AP Reorgnization Act 2014.
“The AP government has consistently resorted to clandestine diversion of waters outside the basin through Pothireddypadu. AP also did not disclose the details of the enhancement head regulator capacity during the arguments before KWDT-2 and constructed a new regulator of 10 gates to enhance its drawing capacity without any approval.”
The officials said that all the government orders issue by the Andhra Pradesh government granting administrative sanction for the works of various projects amounting Rs 47,776 crore related to utilisation of Krishna river water. “These administrative sanctions pertaining to entirely new projects and proposals aimed at further enhancing the scope and extent of diversions of water for at least six projects”.
The State government criticised the KRMB and the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti for not taking against Andhra Pradesh despite repeated requests and detailed representations made by TG for years. “AP’s involvement in large scale diversion of Krishna waters to outside the basin would prejudice the water requirement of the Krishna basin areas of the state of Telangana which are critically dependent on the Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar reservoirs,” it said.
