KRMB seeks water indents from Telangana and AP to meet drinking water needs

The Board has convened a meeting of its three member committee on October 5 at Hyderabad to discuss the indents and plan the water releases till May 31, 2024.

Hyderabad: As the scope to give water for irrigation has been ruled out, the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) has asked both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to submit their indents for supply of water from the Krishna basin projects to meet only their irrigation needs.

The Board has convened a meeting of its three member committee on October 5 at Hyderabad to discuss the indents and plan the water releases till May 31, 2024.

---

Board sources said both the States have agreed that due to due to shortage of water in the common reservoirs, the water available should be used only for meeting the drinking water needs.

But there was no consensus on the indents raised by them during the second meeting of the three member committee held in August last.

As a result the water release orders could not be issued so far. Since the first four months of the water year were already over, the board had called the meeting to discuss the water indents and plan releases accordingly for the remaining eight months of the year.

Based on the indents, water management plans would be formulated till the end of May 2024.

The focus of the meeting would be on the releases mainly from the Srisailam and the Nagarjuna Sagar project. So far as Telangana was concerned, its actual requirement was put at 12.13 tmc from the NSP and 7.12 tmc from Srisailam for the entire year.

The priority of the State is drinking water supply to Hyderabad city and district headquarters centres including Nalgonda. The waters level in the Nagarjuna Sagar project was alarmingly low.

The present storage in Srisailam is 87.66 tm,c as against the gross storage capacity of 215 tmc. The water storage in the Nagarjuna Sagar Project little over 157 tmc as against the gross storage capacity of 312.05 tmc.