Telangana and Andhra Pradesh concede operation protocols of Krishna projects to KRMB

The decision to concede the monitoring protocols to the board was much in contrary to the claims of the State government that no project was conceded to the board so far.

Hyderabad: Contradicting the claims of the Telangana government, both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Thursday conceded their jurisdiction as well as the monitoring control over water releases from the Nagarjuna Sagar Project and Srisailam Project to the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB).

A decision to this effect was taken at an interim meeting of the KRMB held here. Officials of both the States agreed to delegate the water release protocols to the Board. They would forfeit their control over the water releases from the two main projects and all the 15 main outlets of the main projects. As many as nine of the outlets belonged to Telangana.

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The decision to concede the monitoring protocols to the board was much in contrary to the claims of the State government that no project was conceded to the board so far. The Congress government had repeatedly stated that the NSP, which was under the operational control of Telangana, would not be handed to the board at any cost unless its claim for 50 percent share of Krishna waters was considered.

Briefing media persons on the deliberations and decisions at the meeting, C Muralidhar, Engineer-in-Chief (General), Irrigation said the State would continue to shoulder the responsibility of the regular maintenance of the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam while AP would take care of the maintenance of the Srisailam project.

Three-member committee

He said the three-member committee of the Krishna River Management Board would decide water releases and release schedules while the board would implement release orders. Telangana would stick to its demand for sharing the river water on 50:50 ratio. No decision was taken at the board meeting as far as the operation of the hydel projects under the Krishna river projects was concerned. It would be decided later, he said.

No handing over of projects

The ENC maintained that the projects were not handed over to the board. The decision was only to hand over the operation protocols to the board. The State had agreed to the decision so as to avoid day-to-day controversies especially like the November 29 incident in which AP had occupied 16 of the 32 crest gates of the NSP with its police force.

The CRPF deployed at the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam would be under the control of the KRMB. Both States would provide the required staff support to the board, he said.

C Narayan Reddy, ENC, AP, said his State was very much in favour of the projects to the River Board and said GOs were already issued to this effect. Telangana officials had certain ‘inhibitions’ and they were all clarified at the meeting, he said.