Witness appearing for Telangana before the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal (KWDT-II) K. Palanisami, a retired water management scientist, has justified that variation in the effective rainfall would be minimal if more numbers of years are used for calculating evapotranspiration and crop water requirement (CWR).
Replying to questions posed by senior advocate appearing for Andhra Pradesh R. Venkataramani on Monday, Mr. Palanisami said the variation in the effective rainfall would be minimum since the rainfall is not directly taken for the calculation of effective rainfall but the monthly rainfall is correlated with the monthly consumptive use of the crop to arrive at the effective rainfall.
The clarification was given when he was asked by citing effective rainfall data for Gooty, Uravakonda, Tadipatri, Guntakal, Pamidi, Peddavadugur, Peddapuram, Putlur and Krishna Delta System areas in AP and Jurala and Nettempadu areas in Telangana that reckoning of data which is not homogenous and inconsistent would lead to erroneous results in the computation of crop water requirement.
Mr. Palanisami, however, stated that although available data was taken for computing crop water requirement all the above areas (IMD stations) qualify for the purpose as a minimum requirement of 10 years of average data was taken into consideration.
When contended that estimation of crop water requirement in Nagarjunasagar Left Canal area with effective rainfall as a parameter would lead to only 0.5 tmc ft difference for a single window crop, the Telangana’s witness said there was no such difference as per acre basis as slightly modified method was applied with the effective rainfall pattern being non linear.
On being objected to his reliance on some publications and recommendations to arrive at crop water requirement leading to defective conclusions, Mr. Palanisami stated that there would be difference between rain-fed agriculture and irrigated agriculture and the length of crop period is the trigger that would decide the cropping pattern.
Earlier, the Tribunal did not allow AP’s plea to place on record 60 new research documents and extracts from various journals and books and directed it to confront the witness with each document separately.
