Don’t go beyond brief: TS to GRMB

Hyderabad: Telangana State has urged the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) only to look into aspects of projects that do not negatively impact water availability as per Tribunal Awards and refrain from commenting on other aspects including Detail Project Reports (DPRs). The DPRs are taken care by exclusive directorates meant for hydrology, irrigation, planning, water […]

Hyderabad: Telangana State has urged the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) only to look into aspects of projects that do not negatively impact water availability as per Tribunal Awards and refrain from commenting on other aspects including Detail Project Reports (DPRs).

The DPRs are taken care by exclusive directorates meant for hydrology, irrigation, planning, water availability, cost, and design of the Central Water Commission, New Delhi, and send recommendations to it without further delay, Telangana Irrigation and Command Area Development (CAD) Engineer-in-Chief (General) C. Muralidhar, said in a letter to GRMB Chairman. Quoting provisions of Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act (APRA), 2014, he said the function of GRMB and KRMB was to “make an appraisal of any proposal for construction of new projects on Godavari or Krishna rivers and giving technical clearances after satisfying itself that such projects do not negatively impact the availability of water as per the awards of the Tribunal constituted under Inter-State River Water Dispute (ISRWD) Act- 1956 for projects already completed or taken up before the appointed day.

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In the minutes of meeting of second Apex Council held in October 2020, it was clearly mentioned that “appraisal has to be done by CWC also, before placing them before the Apex Council for approval as the Board does not have the requisite wherewithal in terms of technical expertise.”

The DPRs are submitted for technical clearance as per the award of Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal (GWDT) in terms of APRA-2014. But the GRMB was going into many other aspects of DPRs and issuing observations and remarks instead of basically looking into the aspect that “the projects do not negatively impact the availability of water as per the Awards of Tribunal constituted under ISRWD Act for projects already completed or taken up before the appointed day.”

Muralidhar said all the projects were old for which DPRs were submitted to the CWC/GRMB and were either completed or taken up before the appointed day.

The KRMB has addressed a letter to the Chairman, CWC regarding DPR of Rayalseema lift scheme stating that CWC may look into other aspects such as hydrology, irrigation planning, water availability and inter-State issues since the KRMB is not having requisite expertise and requested that such subject matters and analysis in the DPR may kindly be got examined by CWC.

Since GRMB and KRMB have same staffing pattern, it implies GRMB also do not have requisite expertise to look into aspects such as hydrology, irrigation planning, water availability and inter-State issues in the DPR.

This implies that GRMB is not following uniform process in scrutiny of DPRs of Telangana projects and exercising powers more than mandated in the APRA- 2014 under clause 85(8)(d).

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