On the last day of the water year on Wednesday, the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) has noted that Telangana has overdrawn its share in Krishna by 8 tmc ft and Andhra Pradesh underutilised 7.7 tmc ft as per water releases finalised at the special meeting of the board on February 8.
AP was allotted 53.5 tmc ft and Telangana 32.5 tmc ft out of the 86 tmc ft available in Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam projects but they used 45.8 tmc ft and 40.5 tmc ft respectively after February 8 when the decision was taken at special meeting of the board, KRMB member-secretary Samir Chatterjee has said. He presided over a meeting of the working group of KRMB which was attended by Engineers-in-Chief A.B. Venkateswara Rao of AP and C. Muralidhar of Telangana.
Mr. Chatterjee said as there was no provision for carry over of releases at the year-end and making adjustments in the subsequent year as per the Bachawat award, the issue will be taken to the Ministry of Water Resources at a meeting in June-end to find a mechanism for violations by either State.
In spite of overdrawal by Telangana, the meeting decided to let the State use 0.86 tmc ft available in Nagarjunasagar above 502 ft to meet the drinking water requirements of Hyderabad up to June 15. The situation will be reviewed after that. Though 510 ft is the minimum draw down level at Nagarjunasagar, the project authorities had permitted drawing water till 502 ft for drinking water purposes but it was not possible below that as the carrying capacity of an approach channel did not permit.
Not possible
Telangana insisted on sharing about 3.255 tmc ft that will yield by drawing water from Srisailam up to 765 ft from the present level of 775 tmc ft but AP did not agree to it. Depleting Srisailam to meet the demand of Telangana was not possible at present, Chatterjee said.
He added that the demand of AP for release of 1 tmc ft water for Krishna delta system was also not conceded.
The meeting also discussed the lack of coordination between the two States in maintenance of time frame on water releases.
The progress in setting up telemetry stations to monitor water releases was also released. Out of 18 stations proposed to be constructed in the first phase up to June 22, twelve were completed and five under construction, of which two will be over in a day or two. One was yet to be taken up.
There were divergent views of the two States on 29 stations proposed in phase two. Telangana objected to locations at 14 points.
