Telangana, AP to Face Off at KRMB, GRMB Meetings Amidst El Nino Impact Concerns
While the KRMB meeting is scheduled for October 26, the GRMB meeting is slated for October 30.
Hyderabad: Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are likely to go head to head next week over river water sharing issues with two crucial meetings — of Krishna and Godavari river management boards — scheduled for the last week of this month.
While the KRMB meeting is scheduled for October 26, the GRMB meeting is slated for October 30.
The two states have several unresolved issues, and demands on how water from the two rivers are to be shared between them.
The twin meetings also come as Telangana is expected to struggle to cope with the impact of El Nino this year which resulted in poor inflows and storages in its reservoirs in both the river basins, particularly in the Krishna river basin.
While inflows into the Godavari basin reservoirs has not been as in the past, the current position is not as worrisome as in the Krishna basin.
A recent meeting of the three-member committee, tasked with addressing water-sharing issues between the two states, failed to reach a consensus.
This matter will be a key agenda item at the board meeting scheduled for the 26th of this month, with both states preparing to present their respective arguments firmly.
Andhra Pradesh maintains that water should continue to be shared in a 66:34 ratio, a position that Telangana contests.
Telangana argues that since a larger portion of the Krishna basin lies within its territory, allocations should be adjusted accordingly, proposing a 70:30 sharing ratio instead.
Given these conflicting stances, the upcoming KRMB meeting will be critical.
Telangana had also been complaining that AP had been drawing more than its share of allocated water, and was not complying with KRMB’s directive for installation of telemetry systems which can gauge water drawals.
The two states are also expected to raise issues of each other’s projects, and water usage by these projects.
At the GRMB meeting, Telangana is also expected to raise the issue of floods caused by backwaters from AP’s Polavaram project, a concern that Telangana had raised several times in the past.