After being accused of being ‘discriminatory’ by both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) has left the governments of the two Telugu states to sort out the water dispute among themselves.
The KRMB wrote to the engineers-in-chief of both the states on Tuesday and said that it was not in a position to honour the indents of both the states, which had asked it to release water, reported The Times of India.
The Telangana government and Andhra government had asked the board to release 15 TMC and 19 TMC of water respectively from the Srisailam Dam.
This move by the KRMB comes in the wake of Telangana Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao writing a letter to Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari accusing the board of favouring Andhra Pradesh.
In his letter, he accused the board of ‘bias,’ ‘delay,’ and ‘tampering of data.’
Following this, KRMB member-secretary, Samir Chaterjee wrote to the officials of Telangana and Andhra government and told them that both the states had started releasing water from the Srisailam power project from October 6, before the approval of the board. He further requested them to resolve the issue amicably among themselves, Telangana Today reported.
“Both the engineers-in-chief are requested to bilaterally settle the releases through power houses, including already drawn to match outflows with the inflows, considering the safety of Srisailam dam and to maintain requisite level,” Samir wrote.
In response to the letter by the KRMB, Harish Rao hit back.
Speaking to TOI, he said, “Telangana had sent an indent for 122 TMC of water from Srisailam, both for drinking water and irrigation purposes. But few hours later, KRMB releases letters in which it shows our old indent of 15 TMC that we had sought on September 27. The board should have sent our latest indent of 122 TMC to AP. Thus, KRMB has shown its partisan attitude by seeking the view of AP on an old indent.”
The Andhra-Telangana border has two major dams on the Krishna River. While the Srisailam dam, is situated upstream, the Nagarjuna Sagar dam is situated downstream.
The Nagarjuna Sagar has two canals. The left canal, and the right canal, both of which are under Telangana’s control, and the Srisailam is under Andhra’s control, after orders of the KRMB.
The two states have been warring over the water ever since their bifurcation in 2014.