Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam will visit Andhra Pradesh on Thursday to request his counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu for the release of more Krishna water for Chennai, which has been hit by the dismal failure of the northeast monsoon.
Mr. Panneerselvam is expected to urge Mr. Naidu to ensure that Tamil Nadu receives at least 5 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet.)
A senior government official says the demand is realistic as the present storage of the Kandaleru reservoir, the terminal storage point in the Krishna water supply network, is about 13.5 tmcft.
As per the 1983 agreement between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the former should get 4 tmcft during January-April and 8 tmcft during July-October. Between October and December last year, Tamil Nadu realised 0.99 tmcft.
Mr. Panneerselvam will be accompanied by Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan, Advisor Sheela Balakrishnan, secretaries to the Chief Minister and secretaries of the municipal administration and water supply and public works departments, K. Phanindra Reddy and S.K. Prabakar.
The meeting between the chief ministers is likely to take place in Velagapudi of Guntur district where the interim secretariat is located.
On Saturday, Mr. Panneerselvam wrote to Mr. Naidu, seeking him to order the immediate release of water from the Kandaleru reservoir.
Two days later, the water release commenced, and as on Wednesday morning, the initial flow crossed the 86th km point of the Kandaleru-Poondi canal, which is about 150-km long.
After reaching the ‘zero point’ on the inter-State border, water has to travel for another 25 km to reach the Satyamurti Sagar in Poondi.
Since the Krishna water supply project was commissioned in September 1996, around 74 tmcft has been realised by Tamil Nadu. The annual amount of realisation varied from 4.5 tmcft to 8.2 tmcft.
