Hyderabad: The very first meeting of the Godavari River Management Board on Wednesday saw heated arguments between the representatives of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh over sharing of power from the Sileru Hydro Electric Power Stations, which have gone to AP after the amendment to the AP Reorganisation Act on Polavaram.
The Board has been constituted to monitor, distribute and supervise the Godavari waters between the two states.
When Mr Mahendran, the chairman of the Board, held consultations with the representatives of the two states over the modalities of creating schedules for water releases of Goda-vari, the Telangana representatives brought to his notice that the Sileru power component also needed to be brought under the Board’s purview and demanded sharing of power among the two states.
The AP representatives argued that the Board’s duty was to confine itself only to sharing of waters and not power sharing, as per the Act. This was again countered by Telangana representatives who said that since water was being used to generate power, they had every right to claim the power that was being generated.
The Telangana government has also complained to the Central Electricity Authority over AP using the entire power from Sileru without giving a share to it.
Telangana representatives requested Mr Mahendran to use his good offices and inform the central government to bring the Sileru hydel station under the Board’s purview.
Around 440 MW of hydel power is being generated from the two Hydro Electric Stations on Sileru, which is a tributary of the Sabari River, a part of the Godavari River system.
Except this issue, there was unanimity on all other items on the agenda.
In fact, the Board can do very little in matters of sharing of Godavari waters between the two states unlike the one constituted for the Krishna river. There will be abundant flows in Godavari in the downstream AP state while Telangana will receive much less as the river flows below the contour in the state. While all the upper projects on Godavari remain dry with no inflows, there are floods in parts of Khammam and East and West Godavari as several tributaries of Godavari joins at a point much below the Telangana projects.
