Hyderabad: There is near unanimity between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments in opposing Maharashtra and Karnataka, which are seeking early notification of the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal Award on sharing of Krishna River waters among riparian states, though for different reasons.
Andhra Pradesh wants the Centre to defer notification of the Award that was passed in 2013 and re-open the whole case as it feels there was great injustice done to AP.
Its intention is to delay the notification as long as it can so that the old Award which is in vogue will continue for an indefinite period.
The case of Telangana is different. It has already filed an SLP before the Supreme Court, seeking to re-open the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal hearings since a new state has been formed recently. As such they must be provided an opportunity to put forth their arguments for getting a justified share in Krishna waters, claiming it has a large chunk of catchment area of the river.
However there is confusion compounded, with the Centre’s AP Reorganisation Act, which provides extension of Brijesh Kumar Tribunal’s term by two more years without specifying its duties.
Accordingly the Tribunal has asked all the four states to file affidavits on what it should do. Maharashtra and Karnataka have filed affidavits before the Tribunal opposing re-opening of the case and wanted the entire exercise to be confined to apportionate the wat-ers allotted to undivided AP among Telangana and residuary AP only.
Before filing their affidavits, lawyers of both Telangana and AP came down to the city on Saturday and held separate extensive interactions with officials on what should be the nature of arguments before the Tribunal on September 16. However, both the governments want the Tribunal to restart the arguments.
The contention of the Union government, which is also a party, is yet to be known.
There is a separate case being dealt by the Supreme Court, where Maharashtra and Karn-ataka have approached the apex court, seeking direction to the Union government to notify the Krishna River Award in the Official Gazette so that it will come into operation.
The apex court had asked for replies from all the concerned states as well as from the Union government in this regard.
