Hyderabad: The Telangana government has objected to the lift irrigation scheme of the Andhra Pradesh government to draw water from the Tungabhadra River.
TS irrigation minister T, Harish Rao in a letter to Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday has requested him to advise the AP government not to go ahead with the project.
In the letter Mr Harish Rao said the AP government's new lift irrigation scheme will draw water from the Tungabhadra River, between Rajoliba-nda Diversion Scheme (RDS) and the Sunkesula barrage, to irrigate the ayacut through the Penna Ahobilam Balancing Reservoir (PABR) dam under the Tungabhadra project right bank high-level canal system in Ananthapur district.
He wrote that the Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal (KWDT-I) has observed that the Tungabhadra tributary has to contribute substantial flows to the main river Krishna in order to meet the requirements of downstream projects.
He said that KWDT-II has also held that 31 TMC is still available for downstream contribution from the Tungabhadra for meeting the requirements of the projects considered by KWDT-I and KWDT-II.
The proposal of AP to divert about 40 TMC from the Tungabhadra river under this scheme would completely diminish the flows and adversely affect the projects of Telangana, namely the Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy lift irrigation scheme, Alimineti Madhava Reddy Srisailam left bank canal, Nagarjunasagar left bank canal, and Hyderabad water supply scheme, which are drawing water from Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar reservoirs, Mr Rao wrote.
Moreover, the AP government order was issued subsequent to the State Reorganisation Act and any new scheme is to be appraised by the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) and AP will have to make available the detailed project report of this scheme to Telangana State and to KRMB, the minister pointed out.
In view of this, Mr Rao said he has requested the intervention of the Union water resources minister to advise the AP government not to go ahead with this scheme, and also to make available the detailed project report to Telangana State for scrutiny.
