Hyderabad: YSRCP chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy announced a three-day hunger strike from May 16 to 18 at Kurnool to ‘Save the Krishna delta’. Buoyed by what he claimed to be an overwhelming response to his ‘Save democracy’ dharna, he said that this protest was against AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s faulty irrigation policy.
“The ruling party has proved its inefficiency in not raising an issue of public importance pertaining to the core irrigation sector, and we have therefore decided to launch a three-day protest programme. I will sit on a hunger strike at Kurnool, demanding that Andhra Pradesh get the water due to it and seek the intervention of the Centre in the issue.
The Krishna and Godavari Water Boards should be set up for settling inter-state disputes,” Jagan said. He said that the three-day dharna was aimed at drawing the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the chief ministers of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to the injustice being done in water sharing to save the ayacut of Krishna and Godavari and to highlight the failures of CM Naidu in mitigating the acute drought situation in the state. He said that if the water was diverted at Mahabubnagar, Srisailam and Nagarjuna sagar would not get water, which would badly affect the Krishna delta.
Speaking to the media here on Saturday, Jagan observed caustically that the neighbouring states were usurping the river waters while the state government was focusing only on the welfare of contractors, maintaining a stoic silence on the injustice being perpetrated against the state.
Jagan alleged that the chief minister was afraid of questioning the Telangana government, which was drawing water away from Mahabubnagar, severely curtailing inflow into the state, because of his involvement in the cash-for-vote case.
Jagan bemoaned the fact that while the Telangana government was going ahead with the Palamuru- Rangareddy and Dindi projects, lift irrigation was drawing away more than 115 TMC of water and curtailing the waters of the Krishna, a situation that would severely affect the irrigation sector in the state.
