Settle water row through talks: engineers’ body tells Telangana, Andhra Pradesh

‘Centre should not get a chance to enforce the gazette from Oct. 14’

July 27, 2021 11:24 pm | Updated July 28, 2021 09:46 am IST - Hyderabad

Representatives of Telangana Retired Engineers Association giving a copy of the letter addressed to the Chief Minister on river water row to Special Chief Secretary Rajat Kumar in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Representatives of Telangana Retired Engineers Association giving a copy of the letter addressed to the Chief Minister on river water row to Special Chief Secretary Rajat Kumar in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Telangana Retired Engineers’ Association (TREA) has suggested the two Telugu speaking States to work towards addressing the outstanding issues on river water sharing through dialogue till the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal-II (KWDT-II) award is finalised.

“The conflict should be resolved with both the Chief Ministers or their representatives working out a mutually agreed framework till the matter is settled by the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal (KWDT-II) or by a new tribunal which the Telangana government has been pressing for. No opportunity should be given to the Centre to enforce the gazette from October 14,” the engineers’ body said in a letter addressed to CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

If the matter is not settled with dialogue, the Telangana government should move the Supreme Court in time challenging the notification of July 15, president of the association G. Damodar Reddy, general secretary M. Shyam Prasad Reddy, advisors B. Anantha Ramuloo and P. Venkat Rama Rao suggested.

Stating that sharing of Krishna water has long been a serious issue between Telangana and Andhra regions, they pointed out that the rationale behind formation of Telangana was to get its due share in proportion to catchment area, population, drought-prone area, cultivatable area, non-cultivatable area and others.

Bachawat Tribunal (KWDT-I) had awarded en-block share of 811 tmc ft of assured water to erstwhile Andhra Pradesh – for Andhra and Telangana regions with Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar projects being the two joint storage facilities for Krishna water, the engineers’ body said. They submitted a copy of the letter to Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation) Rajat Kumar on Tuesday.

Since the project-wise allocation of water and guidelines for management are not mentioned in KWDT-I and as KWDT-II is yet to give its award, sharing of Krishna river water among AP and Telangana is being carried out as per working arrangement on ad hoc ratio every year for the last seven years and needs to be revised, they observed.

Further, they said that notifying the purview of Krishna and Godavari River Management Boards (KRMB and GRMB) as per Section 87 of the AP Reorganisation Act 2014, is not legally correct without the award of KWDT-II in place. They also pointed out that water is a State subject and as per the existing provisions of the Constitution, only dispute resolution on joint projects on interstate rivers falls within the purview of the Central government.

“The gazette notification on the two river boards’ purview is nothing but taking over the entire water-based projects in the basin except minor irrigation of both the States. It is almost bringing water into the Central list or treating the States as Union territories,” the association observed.

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