It is actually more than geographical area which Telangana will be losing to Andhra Pradesh, because of Polavaram project. With the 205 villages in seven T-mandals now going to AP, Telangana will reportedly forego a vast stretch of forest cover i.e. 139. sq km.
This is expected to add for AP's green wealth. This will reportedly deplete Telangana's forest area from a sprawling area of 21,759 sq km to 21619.66 sq km, while significantly boosting AP's cover from current 24,357 sq km.
Incidentally, the Khammam district which now has these soon-to-be-detached villages is considered Telangana's greenest belt which constitutes 13.95% of the state's complete forest cover.
The merger hasn’t reportedly gone down well either with Telangana environmentalists or local leaders who are waging a war against this arrangement from the beginning. They feel that due to urbanization near Hyderabad, Telangana region is rapidly losing forest cover over last few years while this is expected to further erode the state's green belt which they term it as unfortunate.
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