As a result of the Telangana government’s constant persuasion, the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal has decided to hear arguments on Section-3 of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act first. It issued orders to this effect on Thursday. It said that arguments on Section-3 will be heard from 19-21 of next month.
The tribunal rejected AP’s argument that project-wise allocations should be decided first as per Section-89 of the AP Reorganization Act. It has made it clear that its priority is to decide the shares of Telangana and AP as allocated by the Bachawat Tribunal. It has decided that it will first investigate the project-wise allocations after the shares of the states are decided.
It has stated that if both the issues are investigated simultaneously and orders are issued, there is a possibility of new problems. It recalled that AP has already gone to the Supreme Court to strike down the ‘Further Terms of Reference’ in Section-3. It was stated that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of AP, the issues identified by the Tribunal may not be in line with the orders.
Therefore, the Tribunal has made it clear that it will first hear arguments on Section-3 as per Telangana’s submission and then continue arguments on Section-89 as per the need. The Bachawat Tribunal allocated 811 TMC of Krishna water to the joint Andhra Pradesh. After the bifurcation of the state in 2014, 299 TMC of water was allocated to Telangana and 512 TMC to AP.
However, the KCR government objected to these allocations. It demanded that Telangana’s share in the water be decided first. However, ignoring this, the Central Government had previously issued guidelines to the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal to allocate water only on a project-by-project basis among the Telugu states as per Section-89 of the AP Reorganization Act 2014.
With this, Telangana had no choice but to fight for a long time to give the tribunal the power to investigate under Section 3 of the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956. As a result of KCR’s tireless efforts and the relentless struggle of the Telangana government, the Center finally relented. In October last year, it issued new guidelines for the distribution of Krishna waters under Section 3.
It recommended to the tribunal that the waters allocated to the joint AP should be redistributed between the two states and that the issue of 45 TMC coming through the Godavari diversion should also be resolved. To this end, the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal has started the investigation.