Hyderabad: The Telangana government lodged a complaint with the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) against Karnataka for utilising river Godavari waters without official allocations.

In the recently held NWDA meeting, state Irrigation officials brought to the attention of the NWDA that Karnataka was utilising water without approvals and raised strong objections. The Central Water Commission (CWC) officials explained that most of the states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, etc, were taking the initiative to tap that water, transfer it through links, and utilise it within their states.

The Telangana government was already fighting against Karnataka over the increase of the Almatti dam on the river Krishna recently.

The meeting on the inter-state river linking project, particularly on the proposed Godavari-Cauvery link project, delved into the challenges of taking up the river linking projects.

The Telangana state informed the NWDA that the state agreed to the Godavari-Cauvery link project. However, the government was demanding a share of 50 per cent of the divertible water in the link. The Central water agency officials said that since the Union government has more resources in terms of technology, they should plan to help the states in taking up more and more intra-state linking projects.