Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday asked officials to work with commitment to protect the state's share in river waters. The meeting was held on the strategy to be adopted by the Telangana government against the backdrop of the Union government fixing the jurisdiction of the rivers Krishna and Godavari’s Boards through a gazette notification.
At a high-level meeting, he asked officials to protect the interests of the Telangana farmers, and made it clear that there is no question of backtracking on the issue. The high-level meeting, headed by CM KCR, also had a review of the verdicts given by the Bachawat Tribunal and Brijesh Kumar Tribunal on the rightful and legal share of allocation of waters as a right to Telangana.
The meeting reviewed the items in the Union government’s gazette notification, and the allocation of water for both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the Godavari and Krishna rivers.
As per the gazette notification, the Krishna and Godavari River Management Boards (KRMB and GRMB) will have control over the operations and maintenance of irrigation projects in both Krishna and Godavari basins with effect from October 14, 2021.
Earlier this week, Telangana higher officials skipped the first-ever joint meeting of the Coordination Committees of the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) and Krishna River Management Board (KRMB).
The Telangana government is against the notification, which brought 107 irrigation projects in Telangana and Andhra on both the Godavari and Krishna rivers under the jurisdiction of the KRMB and GRMB.
Andhra, however, has welcomed the decision and has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking to direct the Union government to notify the KRMB.
The Telangana CM has directed officials concerned to strongly put forth the arguments on behalf of the state in the Board meetings. It was decided to meet again on Sunday, August 8, to discuss the matter.
Chief Advisor to the government Rajiv Sharma, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, CM's Principal Secretary S. Narsing Rao, Special Chief Secretary, Irrigation, Rajat Kumar, E-in-Cs Muralidhar, Hariram, OSD to CM Sridhar Deshpande, former Advocate General Ramakrishna Reddy, senior advocate Ravinder Rao, and other officials participated in the meeting.
With IANS inputs