The Revanth Reddy government has alleged that the Andhra Pradesh government is diverting Krishna waters outside the basin at will, resulting in water shortage in the basin. In a complaint to the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal, it accused that the AP is undertaking projects without allocations by the tribunal and proposing ayacut.
The hearing of the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal regarding the redistribution of Krishna waters between the two states as per the Section-3 guidelines issued by the Central Government continued in Delhi on Friday. The Telangana state presented its final arguments before the tribunal chairman Justice Brijesh Kumar, members Justice Rammohan Reddy and Justice S Talapatra.
Senior advocate Vaidyanathan, appearing for Telangana before the tribunal, mentioned the diversion of Krishna waters beyond the basin, allocation of 45 TMCs through RDS and Polavaram diversion, etc. He explained that even in the years of severe water shortage in the Krishna basin, AP diverted 40 TMCs to other areas of the basin in the name of Telugu Ganga Project.
He refuted AP’s claims that the projects in Schedule-11 were approved as per the gazette issued by the Center in 2022. He said that the tribunals did not make any allocations to AP and only gave the joint AP the freedom to use the remaining water.
He explained that not only did it propose an ayacut of 16.3 lakh acres under the surplus water-based projects, it was also expanded to 26.3 lakh, and that AP was acting as it pleased without the tribunal’s water allocation.
It was revealed that due to the diversion of water beyond the basin, the downstream water flows are also not available. He requested that specific restrictions be imposed and controlled on the outlets of the outer basin projects like Pothireddypadu, Muchumarri, HNSS, and Veligonda, and that interim orders be given to the KRMB to ensure that the award terms are not violated.
He said that due to the diversion of Godavari waters to Krishna, Karnataka and Maharashtra are demanding a share of Krishna waters, and the reason for this is that AP is diverting a large amount of water to other areas of the Krishna basin. He reminded that out of the 80 TMC coming through the Polavaram diversion, 45 TMC was distributed to the joint AP and 35 TMC to Karnataka and Maharashtra.
He said that the waters allocated to the joint AP were to be used only upstream of Sagar and in the in-basin. However, AP claims that it will get those 45 TMCs and wants to allocate those waters to projects that divert water to the outer basin, and it has asked that those proposals be rejected.