The leaders from the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh today demanded that Chief Minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy spell out his stand on the status of the region, and asked him to clarify whether he thought of it as a part of the state or not.
Addressing the ongoing water feud between the two Telugu states, former minister and Rayalaseema leader M V Mysura Reddy said, "The
gazette notification released by the Centre sketching out the guidelines for running irrigation and power projects in the Krishna basin has sounded a death knell for the people of the Rayalaseema region."
He alleged that the CM had not thought about the fate of the Rayalaseema-based projects before "welcoming" the Centre's notification and flayed the latter for altogether "ignoring" the region and its people.
The leader then demanded that Jagan legalise all the water projects in the region.
Further, he opined that the "negligent attitudes" of the CMs of both Telangana and AP was causing a lot of distress to the people of the two states.
"Why can't the CMs of the two Telugu-speaking states talk to each other and amicably sort out the water sharing issue when the CMs of five states can hold talks on the Polavaram project?" Reddy asked.
He then faulted the Telangana government for using more than its "fair share" of the waters of the Srisailam project, and asserted, "Only three tmc of water from the Srisailam project should have been used. Why hasn't our CM felt the need to corner Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for overusing the water? If we had a separate greater Rayalaseema government, we would not have had to suffer such losses."