Andhra Pradesh slams Telangana on water projects

Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday accused Telangana of constructing two irrigation projects on Krishna river illegally and contended these will have “adverse” impact on its existing projects, a charge denied by the latter as “baseless”.

Andhra Pradesh made the allegations at the first apex council meeting held here under the chairmanship of Union water resources minister Uma Bharti and attended by Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and his Telangana counterpart, K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

During the meeting, Andhra Pradesh stated that two “new” projects of Telangana, Palamuru Rangareddy and Dindi Irrigation Schemes, are being constructed on the river in “violation” of Andhra Prade-sh Reorganisation Act, 2014 and demanded the council to put those on hold until it receives sanctions.

According to the Act, the two cannot take up new project without the approval of the council.

Telangana though ma-intained that the “ongoing” projects were taken up by former Andhra Pradesh government, which had sanctioned them based on the liberty given by Krishna Water Disputes Tribun-al and hence, did not violate the law.

Meanwhile, the council decided to form a joint committee to ass-ess availability of water in Krishna basin.

Noting the meeting is taking place in the wake of disputes between Odisha and Chhattisagarh over sharing Mahanadi river water and Cauvery water by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Bharti also pitched for formulating a national policy in consultation with states to deal with water crisis.

“During the meeting, Andhra Pradesh raised objections over the projects saying these were taken up violating the AP Reorganisation Act and sans sanctions from the Council.

“It also claimed that the project will have adverse impacts on water availability of existing projects of Andhra Pradesh (irrigating 45.72 lakh acres) with assured allocations,” a source said.

Andhra Pradesh observed that Telangana has already accomplished its utilisation to the extent of 295.86 TMC as against 299 TMC of its Krishna river water share, to claim there is “no further quantum of water is available in Krishna basin” for Telangana to take up “additional projects”