Andhra Pradesh has not asserted its right over 105 tmcft of water from the inter-State irrigation project Tungabhadra Dam at Hospet in Karnataka and the government must take immediate measures to do it politically, said Communist Party of India(CPI) State secretary K. Ramakrishna.
In a letter written to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Mr. Ramakrishna said that the engineers from Karnataka had earlier estimated the holding capacity of the dam having got reduced to 100.5 tmcft in 2008, but following a study by irrigation engineers from three States in 2016, a report given by Mumbai-based RV Associates showed that the dam had a capacity of 105 tmcft and hence pro-rata allocation of Andhra Pradesh must increase.
A decision on this report is still pending in the Tungabhadra Dam Board and no effort is being made to get this approved, the CPI leader wrote in the letter. The Karnataka government, meanwhile, was going ahead and building new dams and reservoirs in the upper reaches stopping flow into the dam, he pointed out.
Total yield
While the total yield is supposed to be 220 tmcft, Karnataka gets 151 tmcft and Andhra Pradesh 69 tmcft.
Anantapur and Kurnool districts are the major beneficiaries from the High Level Canal and Low Level Canal flowing from the dam and with lesser amount of water coming from the Tungabhadra dam, irrigation in Rayalaseema gets affected, he observed demanding immediate action.
