Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Monday met union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in Delhi. He submitted a representation to the union minister that was released by the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) which talks only about projects in the Godavari basin. There is no mention of projects in Krishna basin that have become a bone of contention between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
However, official sources said Rao reiterated his demand of sharing Krishna water at the ratio of 50:50 between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh against 66:34 being shared at present between both the states.
The Chief Minister urged Shekhawat to drop 11 projects in the Godavari basin from the list of 'unapproved projects' mentioned in the recent gazette issued by the Centre bringing all irrigation projects in the Krishna and the Godavari basins under the respective river management boards (KRMB and GRMB).
Rao informed Shekhawat that these 11 projects were started before formation of Telangana State and were well within the 967.94 tmc ft share of the state. Out of this allocation, projects for 758.76 tmc ft are already cleared by the Central Water Commission (CWC) and water availability has been cleared by the Hydrology Directorate for another 148.82 tmc ft. The balance allocation of 60.26 tmc ft has been kept as a reserve for future projects, evaporation losses etc.
Rao stated that 85 tmc ft was allocated to the Icchampally project according to GWDT Award and inter-state agreement among the states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. The Indira Sagar and Rajiv Sagar projects were given in-principle allocation of 16 tmc ft each. The Devadula LIS was allocated 38 tmc ft and all relevant clearances for the project were also obtained. Thus, a total of 155 tmc ft allocation was obtained from the CWC for these four projects.
Rao brought to his notice that in lieu of above four projects, the Telangana government had decided to take up Sitarama project with an allocation of 70 tmc ft, Devadula LIS (with barrage at Tupakula Gudem) with 60 tmc ft, Mukteswar (Chinna Kaleshwaram) LIS with 4.5 tmc ft, Ramappa-Pakhala Link with 3 tmc ft, Modikunta Vagu with 2.14 tmc ft and Chowtupally Hanumanthu Reddy LIS with 0.8 tmc ft. This totals to 140.44 tmc ft leaving a balance of 14.56 tmc ft as reserve.
"As these projects are taken up by the Telangana government out of water allocations already approved by CWC, the DPRs of these projects may be expeditiously approved," Rao said.
He clarified that an additional 1 tmc ft per day of Kaleshwaram project was not an additional nor a new project. It had only been taken up with the state government funds to utilise 240 tmc ft allocations made to Kaleshwaram project by CWC, within a shorter time period and as such did not require any approval by the Centre.
Similarly, he said, Kandakurthi LIS, Ramappa-Pakhala Link, Tupakulagudem barrage, Gudem LIS, Kanthanapally projects also did not require any approval and urged Shekhawat to drop these 11 projects from 'unapproved list' in the Centre's recent gazette.
