Telangana, Andhra Pradesh Settle Water Disputes

In a major turn of events, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Chandrababu Naidu, at the Apex Council meeting held at Shrama Shakti Bhavan in the national capital New Delhi on September 21, finally broke the logjam over the long-drawn-out Krishna and Godavari water disputes between the two States, and reached a solution that would benefit both the States.

During the two-hour meeting, the two Chief Ministers presented their studies on the amounts of river waters allocated to the two States pre- and post-bifurcation, and on the amounts of waters the two States would need to meet the basic needs of their peoples.

There were some initial hindrances during the meeting as Naidu asked the Centre to stall the Palamur - Ranga Reddy and the Dindi projects taken up by Telangana, citing that they were not related to the GOs issued before bifurcation of united AP. KCR objected to this. The Union ministers and officials however favoured an amicable solution and convinced the two CMs to use the river waters proportionately, to which they agreed.

The two CMs also agreed to set up a committee comprising of engineers and officials who would be appointed jointly by the Centre and the two States, and also by the Krishna Tribunal, to carry out the works for and monitor all related projects. The committee will stipulate the quantity of water available (in cusecs) through telemetry and will submit a report on the same to the Brijesh Kumar Krishna Tribunal. This will allow the Tribunal to decide the amount of water that should be released to the two States.

Chairperson of the Apex Council meeting and Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharti expressed hope that the two States would from now on make use of the river waters as decided in the meeting.