An all-party meeting chaired by Chief Minister Revanth Reddy at the Secretariat on Wednesday has asked the Center to stop the Banakacharla project immediately. Revanth Reddy revealed that he will meet Union Water Resources Minister CR Patil in Delhi on Thursday and inform him of the government’s decision. He said that Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy, Union Ministers Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay will meet the Union Minister along with him in Delhi.
The Telangana government has expressed strong objections to the Godavari- Banakarla Link project proposed by the Andhra Pradesh government and will make all possible attempts to stop the project, the CM said. He said that they will continue their efforts on these three bases: technical, political and legal.
The Chief Minister revealed that they will try to stop the project by putting political pressure on the Central government and if that is not possible, they will take legal action.
He has directed the State Irrigation Department Advisor and retired IAS officer Adityanath Das to prepare a comprehensive report on the projects in the Godavari Krishna basin and to make the MPs aware of the pressure on the Center and to prepare a report and present it to the representatives of all parties.
Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy organized a powerpoint presentation on this project. MPs of all parties in Telangana have been invited to this meeting. DK Aruna and Raghunandan Rao from BJP, MP Vaddiraju Ravichandra from BRS and Asaduddin Owaisi from AIMIM attended. Congress MPs Renuka Chowdhury, Raghuram Reddy, Raghuveer, Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy, Balaram Nayak, Mallu Ravi, Anil Kumar Yadav, Suresh Shetkar also participated.
The government is also considering the possibility of approaching the Supreme Court if the Center allows this project. CM Revanth Reddy made it clear that the interests of Telangana farmers are important to his government. He urged MPs to move forward with the interests of farmers as an agenda beyond politics and that we all work together towards that end.
He explained that this meeting was not organized for political gain, but for the interests of the state. He questioned that after the formation of Telangana, the central government had convened an Apex Council meeting on 21.-9.-2016, and that in that meeting, the then CM KCR had first revealed that 3,000 TMCs of water were flowing into the sea on Godavari.
He wondered how the then government found 3,000 TMCs surplus water? He said that the then Telangana CM KCR had again announced on 13 August 2019 that Rayalaseema would be made Ratanala Seema, and that KCR and Jaganmohan Reddy had met four times at Pragathi Bhavan to decide to transfer the Godavari waters to Rayalaseema.