Assembly Resolution To Not Hand Over Projects To KRMB

The Telangana State Legislative Assembly today passed a unanimous resolution that it would not hand over control of its projects to the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) unless the board agreed to the conditions laid out by the State government.

Moving the resolution in the House, Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy explained that the Krishna river was the lifeline of the regions of southern Telangana both for irrigation and drinking water purposes. After the formation of Andhra Pradesh, through the Bachawath Tribunal Award, 811 TMC of water was allocated to Andhra Pradesh. Successive governments had created substantial irrigation potential through the construction of major projects, he said.

However, after the formation of the new State of Telangana, sufficient attention was not given to the requirements of the Krishna Basin, and the then government had agreed to the grossly unfair ratio of water sharing between the two States of 299 TMC to Telangana and 512 TMC to Andhra Pradesh, Reddy said.

"Through the AP Reorganization Act of 2014, the KRMB was created to regulate the water sharing between the two States. The then government also proposed to hand over control of the common projects, i. e. the Srisailam dam and the Nagarjuna Sagar dam, to the KRMB, which is detrimental to the interests of Telangana. The KRMB jurisdiction to that effect has also been notified by the Government of India, which was not objected to by the previous government," Reddy said in the resolution.

The irrigation minister said that on the night of November 29, 2023, the Government of AP, by sending armed police, forcibly took over the control of the right side of the Nagarjuna Sagar dam, which was till then under the control of Telangana. The union government then intervened and sent the CRPF to remove the AP police, he said, and added that the CRPF now controlled the dam.

The House resolved to request the Government of India to withdraw the CRPF and hand over the control of the project to the Telangana government. The resolution said that certain conditions needed to be fulfilled for Telangana to hand over control of the common projects to the KRMB. These included using catchment areas, drought-prone areas, basin populations and cultivable areas as the basis for water-sharing between AP and Telangana.

The irrigation minister earlier gave a PowerPoint presentation explaining the resolution's aims and objectives. In the presentation he accused the previous BRS regime of surrendering Telangana's interests by agreeing to 512 TMCs for Andhra Pradesh and 299 TMCs for Telangana. He claimed that the BRS regime eventually also decided to give away the control of the projects. He also gave a detailed chronology of the meetings and events, and their implications, to substantiate his allegations.

After over four hours of debate, the House unanimously passed the resolution.