Telangana has registered its protest with the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) and objected to the attitude of Andhra Pradesh over the inclusion of a Telangana-native Central Water Commission (CWC) engineer in the board’s team to visit the Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation Scheme (RLIS) worksite to find violation, if any, of the NGT’s earlier order.
In a letter addressed to Chairman of the KRMB M. P. Singh on Thursday, Engineer-in-Chief (General) of Irrigation C. Muralidhar faulted AP on filing a petition before the National Green Tribunal stating that the composition of the visiting team including Devendra Rao, a native of Telangana, was not in consonance with the orders of the gazette issued on July 15 notifying the purview of the river board.
According to the July 15 notification, no official/engineer from either Telangana or AP is to be part of the river board as Members (from board’s side). AP has contended in NGT that the same would apply to any inspection team too.
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Stating that the objection of AP was very unfortunate, Mr. Muralidhar said AP’s view amounted to questioning the credibility of the entire team as the decision would not be made on any individual member’s view but the panel as a whole since it would comprise officials from KRMB and CWC. He also reminded the KRMB Chairman that Telangana did not object to the inclusion of M. K. Srinivas, an AP-native engineer with CWC, in the team to inspect Kalwakurthy and Palamuru-Rangreddy Lift Irrigation schemes’ pump houses.
“Attributing intentions to CWC officers by AP is very unfortunate and unethical. The objection on such grounds is strongly protested and which, in fact, seems to be only the delaying tactics to postpone the NGT proceedings,” Mr. Muralidhar said and requested the KRMB Chairman to go ahead with the visit and submit report to the NGT on the due date – on August 9 —, so that the Tribunal could take action in the contempt petition.