With no headway in sight on the implementation of purview of the Krishna and Godavari River Management Boards (KRMB and GRMB), the Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS) has decided to hold a third meeting of the Apex Council soon to convince Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to hand over the management of all projects to the two river boards.
Although the gazette notification issued by the Ministry on the purview of river boards on July 15 last had come into force officially on October 14, 2021, the two member States are yet to depute the required administrative and engineering staff, yet to deposit one-time seed money of ₹400 crore each besides not handing over the projects citing various reasons.
Consensus
The two States have consensus on handing over only one Godavari Basin project – Peddavagu in Khammam district having ayacut in Telangana and AP. On the other hand, AP has offered to hand over the management of Srisailam project, one of the two common reservoirs, with the pre-condition that Telangana should hand over its hydro-electric projects/units at Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar.
TS stand
However, Telangana has been consistently contending that there is no need to hand over the projects both in the Krishna and Godavari Basins, which serve the needs of only one State. “Our stand has been clear from the beginning that the river boards need to manage only joint projects, that too having clear mandate on water share and mechanism for measuring water drawals at all take-off points in place,” a senior engineer involved in the river boards’ matters told The Hindu.
The engineer explained that Telangana’s suggested agenda for the Apex Council meeting will include clearance of projects for Sitarama, Sammakka Sagar (Thupakulagudem), Mukteshwaram (Chinna Kaleshwaram), Modikuntavagu, Chanakha-Korata and Chowtpally Hanmanth Reddy projects and referring the matter of Krishna water allocation afresh to a new or existing tribunal.
A virtual meeting convened by MoJS Secretary with the Chief Secretaries, Water Resources/Irrigation Secretaries and Engineers-in-Chief of Telangana and AP on December 28 had also failed to ‘break the ice’ in the matter of implementation of river boards’ purview with the two States sticking to their stand. On January 27, MoJS Secretary held another virtual meeting with Chairmen of the two river boards to inquire the status of gazette implementation.
Priority issues
Two previous Apex Council meetings held in September 2016 and October 2020 had failed to bring much consensus among the member States on contentious issues. “We are finalising our priority issues for the agenda as sought by MoJS recently for the next Apex Council meet with the hope that at least a few of them pending with the Centre (MoJS/Central agencies) get clearance/approval,” the irrigation engineer said.
