The Telangana Irrigation Department has strongly countered the claims of their Andhra Pradesh counterparts over issues pertaining to Krishna River water sharing during the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) meeting in Vijayawada on Friday. The Telangana officials brushed aside the objections raised by AP to carry forward the previous year’s allocations made from the Nagarjuna Sagar project and stated that they were only storing the water to meet the drinking water requirements in summer. They also discussed the release of water to Chennai for drinking water purposes, during the meeting.
The Andhra Pradesh officials argued that two-thirds of the Krishna River water supply should be accounted into AP while one-third into Telangana’s account. But the officials from Telangana maintained that water up to 5 TMC should be accounted to Telangana while the rest should go into the account of Andhra Pradesh.
Further, the Andhra Pradesh authorities wanted the utilization of the overflowing water from the main reservoirs not to be considered into the respective State’s account. However, Telangana argued that the issue was under consideration of a committee appointed by the Central government and hence, cannot be decided.
According to officials, the meeting was mainly convened to discuss water release orders from Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar projects. “We have placed indent before the board for the release of water to meet the requirement till March 31,” an official said.
As the release date has expired in December, a fresh indent was placed before the Board for allocations till March. “We placed our arguments before the board and clarified the doubts,” the official said. On behalf of Telangana, Nagarjuna Sagar Chief Engineer V Narasimha attended the meeting headed by the member secretary.
