Telangana clears stand on Godavari diversion

. Telangana has requested for 50 per cent share of the water sought to be diverted.

Hyderabad: The transfer of Godavari water to the Cauvery basin was one of the key election issues in Tamil Nadu which went to polls in the first phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections this time. The same is likely to garner significant attention in Telangana too in the run-up for the Parliamentary polls that are due in the fourth phase. Irrespective of the party in power, the State has remained steadfast in safeguarding its water interests.

As for Tamil Naidu, it is closely monitoring the moves afoot for implementation of the project. It is of immense benefit for its water-starved districts in the Cauvery basin. Telangana experts emphasize that their concurrence would be hard to obtain in the absence of consensus among the stakeholder States.

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As the debate gets intensified, the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) is finding it tough to maintain the delicate balance between the regional interests and river water entitlement of riparian States. The onus would be mainly on the task force spearheading the implementation of the project for inter-linking of Godavari-Krishna- Penna- Cauvery. Telangana had already made its stand clear on the project, said a senior official in the Irrigation Department. It had also requested NWDA to carry out a detailed hydrological simulation study.

The NWDA had only called for suggestions from the State. It has not set any deadline for its response. But the Irrigation Secretary had responded to it and vindicated the State’s stand on the issue in his communication addressed to the agency. Now the Task Force is to come up with its analysis and studies, the official said.

It has been proposed to transfer 148 tmc of water, mainly from the unutilised share of Chhattisgarh State. Telangana has suggested that the Sammakka project should be the source of water drawl for the river linking scheme instead of going in for construction of the Inchampalli project, which is located some 12 km upstream, as it involved operational difficulties in routing the flood.

Pending such a study, Telangana would not be able to respond positively and it would reserve its stand with regard to the source of drawl, officials said. Telangana has requested for 50 per cent share of the water sought to be diverted. Its share of the diverted water was in fact restricted so far to 45 tmc, which meant only 27 per cent of it.

The State has vast areas that are severely drought-prone. Some 16.8 lakh acres in erstwhile Mahabubnagar district in Krishna basin was in need of assured water for irrigation and drinking water supply. About 12.9 lakh acres in erstwhile Nalgonda and 7.2 lakh in Ranga Reddy district were in the grip of scarcity conditions. The scheme for interlinking of rivers is expected to help irrigate only some extent of 1.9 lakh acres of new area.

It would be appropriate to take up the interlinking process only after the adjudication of the water sharing by the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (KWDT)-II as the tribunal is in the process of operation protocols by taking into consideration the deficit inflows into Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar project, officials stressed.