A virtual meeting held with the chief secretaries and Irrigation Department officials of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on Tuesday by Union Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Pankaj Kumar has not made much headway in the matter of implementation of the purview of Krishna and Godavari River Management Boards (KRMB and GRMB).
The meeting was held to take forward the implementation of gazette notification of July 15 last, which has officially come into force from October 14, as the State governments have adopted an approach of delayed/slow response in submitting the detailed project reports of ongoing and proposed projects, arranging seed money of ₹400 crore each by the two States, transfer of manpower, records to manage projects and handing over of projects for deployment of CISF personnel.
It is understood that the two States have not given any specific commitment to the MoJS Secretary and instead focused on clearance for their projects and also on complaining about projects taken up by the other State in violation of the existing KWDT award.
Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation) Rajat Kumar, Engineer-in-Chief (General-Irrigation) C. Muralidhar, ENC (Kaleshwaram-Gajwel) B. Hariram, Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister on Irrigation Sridhar Rao Deshpande participated in the virtual meet.
Mr. Somesh Kumar highlighted the urgency to refer the issue of water allocation to Telangana afresh to a tribunal, existing or new, under Section 3 of the Inter State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, stating that Telangana has withdrawn its petition in the Supreme Court on the issue as early clarity was needed on water share of Telangana in Krishna Basin. Mr. Pankaj Kumar said the matter was with the Law Department for its opinion and once it was received, it would be referred to a tribunal.
Thje Chief Secretary informed that Telangana has submitted DPRs of Sita Rama Lift Irrigation Scheme, Sammakka Sagar (Thupakulagudem) Project, Mukteshwaram (Chinna Kaleshwaram) LIS, Chowtpally Hanumanth Reddy LIS, Modikuntavagu Project and Channakha-Korata Barrage, all on Godavari river to the Central Water Commission (CWC) in September this year but were still pending clearance. The MoJS Secretary has assured that the projects would be cleared soon.
Mr. Somesh Kumar also referred another five projects in the Godavari Basin — Ramappa-Pakala link project, Kaleswharam Project (Additional 1 tmc ft per day), Kandakurthy LIS, Gudem LIS and P.V. Narsimharao-Kanthanapally Barrage — which were wrongly included in the unapproved list (Schedule) of projects in the gazette notification of GRMB. He requested the Union Secretary for their removal from the list of unapproved projects.
The Chief Secretary of Telangana also observed that there was no need of GRMB since there were no major issues and no common projects for regulation between the two States on the Godavari Basin.
