Telangana Protests 70:30 Water Allocation

The Telangana government on Tuesday registered its protest over the Krishna River Management Board's (KRMB) decision to allocate 35.1 tmc of water for Andhra Pradesh and only 17 tmc for Telangana for the next one month.

As the two Telugu States failed to reach an agreement on the sharing of the Krishna river water at a recent KRMB meeting, the Board gave an interim order on Monday allocating 35.1 tmc for AP and 17 tmc for TS.

The total amounts of water divided between AP and TS is in the ratio of 70:30. Responding to this, Telangana Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation) S K Joshi wrote a letter to the Member-Secretary to KRMB, on Tuesday, protesting against the unbalanced distribution.

"I lodge a protest on behalf of the Telangana government for the unreasonable ratio (70:30) prescribed by the Tribunal," the letter read.

"It may be recalled that on the basis of orders issued by the erstwhile AP government, out of 811 tmc of dependable water, the share of the successor States of AP and TS is in the ration 512:299, respectively. This ratio was also agreed in the meeting held in June 2016, by the Ministry Of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. Accordingly, the same ratio must be maintained unless bilaterally modified by the Tribunal," Joshi informed the KRMB. He requested the Board to take necessary action to revise the water release ration issued on Monday at the earliest.

Earlier, the KRMB said that of the total available water, Telangana would get 43 tmc while AP would get 87 tmc. On this assumption, the KRMB decided to release 35.1 tmc for AP and 17 tmc for TS for next one month.

As per KRMB member-secretary Sameer Chatterjee's orders, while AP would get 10 tmc for the Krishna delta, 15 tmc for the NSP right canal, 3.1 tmc for the NSP left canal and 7 tmc for the HNSS, Telangana would get only 4 tmc for Hyderabad's drinking water needs and 13 tmc for the Nagarjuna Sagar Project (NSP) left canal, for the next one month.