Reportedly Chief Ministers of the two telugu states, who shared bonhomie for the last one year after the general elections, are now locking horns over the critical issue of sharing krishna waters. ap chief minister Y.S. jagan mohan reddy issued GO No. 203 to construct a lift irrigation scheme to divert krishna water from the srisailam project, which is shared by both the states. reddy even expressed readiness to release funds for the project which would provide water to rayalaseema, an area that faces water crisis almost throughout the year.
Taking objection to it, his TS counterpart k. chandrashekar rao instructed the officials to approach the krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (KWDT) and challenge AP’s decision in the supreme Court. Rao said that the ap government had taken the decision unilaterally and that it was committing a “grave mistake” by doing so, in violation of the rights of telangana and the provisions of the ap Reorganisation Act, 2014. He reminded that the Reorganisation Act insists that either of the states should consult the apex committee if it wanted to build a project on River Krishna.
Meanwhile the opposition parties in telangana, including the congress and the bjp, staged a protest criticising their cm of getting into a match-fixing deal with his counterpart in AP. They alleged that the ap government was trying to completely dry up telangana and turn it into a desert by drawing extra water from Pothireddypadu. They also said that building an LI scheme at 805-ft was a conspiracy against the telangana people. On the other hand, Jaganmohan reddy says there is a right for the ap government to draw 44,000 cusecs from Pothireddypadu and wondered why should the TS leaders oppose the ap when it is taking its rightful share of water. However the opposition parties in ap, including the telugu Desam and Jana Sena have not made any statement on the dispute so far. They adopted the ‘wait and watch’ policy on the issue. But, bjp state chief kanna lakshminarayana was all praises for jagan as he is fighting for water share of the state.
