AP-TG squabbles on river waters hits Palamuru project

Hyderabad:The Palamuru Rangareddy lift irrigation scheme (PRLIS), one of the priority projects for completion by the Congress government which was hoping to put it to use from early 2027, is in jeopardy with the Central Water Commission (CWC), for all practical purposes, refusing to give it the required permissions.

The project, when completed, was to irrigate 12.3 lakh acres in Nagarkurnool, Mahbubnagar, Vikarabad, Rangareddy, Narayanpet, and Nalgonda districts. It is also expected to supply drinking water to surrounding villages and support industrial use. The project is designed to lift 90 thousand million cubic (tmc) feet of flood water for 60 days from the foreshore of the Srisailam project reservoir on Krishna river.

It may be recalled that it was in a letter dated December 19 that the CWC said it was sending back the detailed project report of the PRLIS back to the state irrigation department and was removing the project from its list of projects under its appraisal.

“What this means is that we cannot take up any irrigation component of the project or related works until the project makes its way back into the CWC’s under scrutiny list. However, since drinking water is of top most priority, that component of the project can be pursued,” a senior official of the irrigation department said.

The government had been hoping that the CWC would issue the required clearances so it can proceed with fully completing by December 2026 the project by finishing pending works left incomplete by the then BRS government.

One of the issues that the CWC said that was not addressed by the Telangana government related to using 45.66 TMC ft of water it said it can save from various minor irrigation projects on Krishna river and use that water for PRLIS. However, the CWC said in a letter on April 4, 2024, it asked for these details in a prescribed format, but this was not done till December 19, 2024.

The PRLIS project application was with the CWC since September 2022, and of the plan to draw 90 TMC ft of water at the rate of 1.5 TMC ft a day, Telangana sought to use 45 TMC ft gained from savings in minor irrigation projects, and another 45 TMC ft against diversion of Godavari waters to Krishna.

The CWC, however, in its letter said as per the Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal, out of 80 TMC of diversion of Godavari waters from Polavaram Project in Andhra Pradesh, 45 TMC was allocated to erstwhile unified Andhra Pradesh. But with both the bifurcated states now claiming share of 45 TMC each from these diverted waters, the total would exceed the water allocated for diversion. “Also, as of now, there is no mutual agreement between AP and Telangana for sharing of the 45 TMCft of water, and hence the government of Telangana needs to furnish an agreement to justify the 45 TMC ft water use for PRLIS,” the letter said.

Telangana and AP have been locked in a bitter battle over their shares of the 811 TMC ft of water in Krishna river allocated to unified AP, a dispute that has been pending before the Krishna Waters Dispute Tribunal, making any progress in clearances impossible until this issue is sorted out. And as “the matter is now sub-judice, currently the appraisal of Palamuru Rangareddy LIS cannot be carried out,” the CWC said.