Hyderabad: With the coming flood season, AP and Telangana may withdraw more water from Krishna to serve their irrigation, with the principle of ‘first come, first served’ basis. There is no pact formed on the limits of withdrawal by Krishna River Management Board till now.
Officials had been following instructions of their respective governments rather than the Board in the recent past, says a report of DC.
Jurala will be the first major reservoir across the River Krishna that will be fully under the control of Telangana. While Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar dam operations were entrusted to the governments of AP and TS respectively.
Krishna River Management Board has said that the engineering officials working there should obey the orders of the Board in compliance with all instructions issued by it.
However, the fact is that there are no specified allocations and working table for many new schemes in TS and AP. “If there are more inflows in Krishna, there is no problem with usage or excess usage, when there are no inflows problems will crop up. We have to be more careful about this,” said a senior KRMB official.
There was also a dispute after TS complained to the Board that AP was not setting up the telemetry system at a point near Pothireddypadu head regulator which was agreed to by both the states.
In the earlier agreement AP would get 512 tmc ft and TS 299 tmc ft of water and any further sharing, below or above this quantum, should be done using this formula.
Using this as a tool, the TS government has been drawing more waters from Srisailam than from Nagarjunasagar last year, arguing that it can draw water from anywhere as long as sticks to its share limit of 299 tmc ft.
Similarly, AP says that it will use more from Srisailam to cater to the needs of Rayalaseema projects. So far, there has been no taken action by the KRMB against either state with regard to complaints on excess usage.
Moreover, either of the States has not provided any details of the water withdrawal to the board.
T. Harish Rao, TS irrigation minister during a review meeting with officials told them to utilise the maximum quantum of water for various schemes in Mahbubnagar district from Jurala and Srisailam dam. He also promised to provide water in Kharif season for eight lakh acres in the same district as canals, distributaries and field channels this year.