Hyderabad: Telangana has urged the Krishna River Management Board to immediately stop Andhra Pradesh from going ahead with the Rayalaseema lift irrigation scheme (RLIS) contending that its plans for increasing drawal of water from the river were in contravention of how the water is to be shared between the two states.
Hours after the Centre on Wednesday announced that it was setting up terms of reference for Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal-II to fix Telangana and Andhra Pradesh’s share from the 1,004 tmc ft of water available for the two states, Telangana wrote to the KRMB flagging Andhra Pradesh going ahead with RLIS.
In his letter to KRMB, irrigation department’s engineer-in-chief C. Muralidhar said AP was going ahead with RLIS works that would divert 59 tmc ft of Krishna water for use outside of the river’s basin, which is against the KWDT-I award.
He said that against the 1,500 cusecs from Srisailam reservoir for supplying drinking water to Chennai as per a 1976-77 agreement, AP increased the canal capacity to 11,000 cusecs, then 44,000 cusecs and now to 80,000 cusecs.
“All these issues are pending before KWDT-II,” Muralidhar said, adding that AP’s actions were illegal and should be stopped immediately as diversion of the water to outside of Krishna river basin areas deprives water to meet the needs of people of the in-basin areas.
