HYDERABAD: Telangana, in the middle of an ongoing battle with Andhra Pradesh over sharing of Krishna river water, asked the Central Water Commission (CWC) to keep in abeyance clearances given to Karnataka for Upper Bhadra and Upper Tunga projects in that state immediately. Telangana told the CWC that the Tungabhadra contributed substantially to Krishna river flows, and the present clearances to the two Karnataka projects would further reduce the inflows into the Krishna. Telangana, in a letter to the CWC, said, it would further jeopardize its interests.
In the letter, the engineer-in-chief of Telangana’s command area development department, C. Muralidhar, however, made it clear that the state had no objection to the Centre giving a national project status to any project in Karnataka, but was objecting to clearing a project without examining all inter-state aspects of river water sharing as laid down in the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal-I’s award of water shares.
Telangana contends that the Krishna is a deficit river basin, and that the needs of the lower riparian states need to be considered before giving any clearances to projects in states through which the river flows before entering Telangana. Krishna originates in Maharashtra, passes through Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh before it empties itself into the Bay of Bengal.
The letter also said special leave petitions were pending before the Supreme Court of India on allocation of water to Karnataka in the Tungabhadra sub-basin, and to the Upper Bhadra and Upper Tunga projects. The KWDT-II had allocated 9 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) of water to the Upper Bhadra, and 11 TMCft of water to the Upper Tunga projects. Telangana contends that these allocations, without holistic and comprehensive examination, would jeopardize Telangana’s interests, the letter said.
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