Despite the Telangana government denying that it has not agreed to handing over to Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) joint projects of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh — Srisailam and Nagarjunsagar — at a meeting convened by the Ministry of Jal Shakti on January 17, the KRMB has scheduled a meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue.
Sharing the meeting notice and agenda to the two member States on Tuesday, KRMB Superintending Engineer R.V. Prakash asked the Engineers-in-Chief of the two States to attend the meeting on February 1 for discussing and finalising the protocols for the management of the two projects and their outlets. They have also been asked to come with a concrete action plan for handing over of the two projects’ management to the river board.
In the meeting notice, the river board engineer claimed that the two States have mutually agreed at the January 17 meeting held by the Ministry of Jal Shakti on several contentious issues. He stated that it was agreed up that the ENCs of the two States and KRMB would discuss and finalise the protocols for handing over the management of Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar dams and all 15 prioritised components/outlets of the two projects to the river board.
Further, it was agreed upon that both the States would handover 15 outlets of the two projects to the river board within time period of one month and that CRPF would keep a strict vigil on Nagarjunsagar dam and would allow engineers and officials of A.P. and Telangana to enter the structure only after permission from the river board.
The KRMB engineers said that maintenance works of critical nature to be carried out by the two States on Nagarjunasagar in their respective sides would be permitted only on written request from the States for carrying them out under the supervision of the river board and also that the two States would releases funds to the river board immediately for the current financial year and dues of previous years, if any, in order to allow KRMB fulfil its statutory obligations.
Official sources in Telangana Irrigation department have made it clear that they would approach the government whether to attend the meeting or not in the backdrop of the decision taken at the highest level that management of the two common projects would not be handed over to the river board in the absence of clarity on water shares.
