Andhra Pradesh welcomes Centre order on Krishna and Godavari

Andhra Pradesh welcomes Centre order on Krishna and Godavari.

On Friday, the Government of Andhra Pradesh welcomed the Central Government Gazette notification ending the jurisdiction of both the Krishna River Board of Directors (KRMB) and the Godavari River Board of Directors (GRMB).

J Syamala Rao, Senior Secretary of the Irrigation Department, said that with the Gazette notification, KRMB and GRMB will have control over the operations and maintenance of irrigation projects in the Krishna and Godavari basins, which will come into effect from October 14, 2021.

He said that this particular notice was long overdue since the Andhra Pradesh bifurcation, adding that the water part of the State will now fall under the jurisdiction of the Boards.

Rao said that Telangana has been generating electricity independently for the past 45 days at the Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar, and Pulichintala projects. In fact, for power generation, the state government provides an indentation to KRMB, and, based on the indentation, the Board issues orders for power generation.

However, the Telangana government began independently generating electricity without orders from KRMB and went further by issuing GO 34 to generate 100 percent power, Rao said.

“Since June 1 of this year, the Srisailam reservoir had an inflow of 30.38 TMC, of ​​which 29.82 TMC were used by the Telangana government for power generation, leaving storage at 806.8 feet. The minimum water level must be 854 feet to get water from the Srisailam reservoir through the main Pothireddypadu regulator on a gravity basis and a water level of 881 feet must be stored to use the state portion of water, “he said.

Explaining the case of the Pulichintala project, he said that the Telangana government used 8 TMC of water for power generation, despite the objection of the KRMB. For the last 45 days, since June 1, the Telangana government has used 66 TMC of water for power generation, even after raising objections from the AP and KRMB.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure that the Telangana government stopped generating power and also appealed to notify the KRMB jurisdiction and hand over the common projects to the board assigning central forces like CISF as security, said Syamala Rao.

In this case, the state government also approached the Supreme Court to resolve the issues. In this context, the Center has made the Gazette notification putting all projects under the jurisdiction of KRMB and GRMB, he said.