YSR Congress president Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy on Tuesday said the Congress hatched a conspiracy to hurry through the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal –II award so that it does not come in the way of division of the State.
Addressing a press conference, Mr. Reddy said it was clear from the speed with which the Centre was proceeding with bifurcation that it did not want any obstacle like proper sharing of Krishna river water. There is indeed a link between the first announcement of Telangana formation on December 9, 2009, which happened to be birthday of AICC president Sonia Gandhi and the Justice Brijesh Kumar led KWDT-II’s interim order in 2010.
He said the same thing was happening now with the Congress using its power to see that KWDT-II gives its verdict just before the final announcement of bifurcation on December 9 and ensure that there is no controversy over surplus water from Krishna river.
It wants to sweep all outstanding issues under the carpet and go ahead with bifurcation.
Yet leaders like TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu remain silent not criticising Congress or Ms. Gandhi and only target former Chief Minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy who is no more, he said. He wondered what Mr. Naidu did when the Supreme Court delivered a judgment saying lower riparian State had no right to use surplus water. He was not only the Chief Minister but played key role in installing H. D. Deve Gowda as Prime Minister who went on to extend full support to the then Karnataka Government’s argument harming Andhra Pradesh’s interests.
It was precisely to use the window of opportunity given by the Bachawat Award and the impending constitution of new tribunal that Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy embarked on building as many projects as possible based on allocated and surplus water and gave a letter to the Tribunal. In contrast, Mr. Naidu who was Chief Minister for nine years till 2004 neither filed counter to the Supreme Court’s verdict on surplus water nor bothered to build irrigation projects.
Mr. Jagan reiterated that if the Congress was so keen on bifurcation of the State by merging two districts of Rayalaseema with Telangana, it could as well combine other districts too and call the entire State Telangana. “We have no problem if they do this”.
