HYDERABAD: The Telangana state government urged the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) not to share its DPRs (detailed project reports) of six irrigation projects being constructed on the Godavari with the Andhra Pradesh government.
It also requested the GRMB to follow the stand being adopted by the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) on AP's Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation Scheme (RLIS), the DPR of which was not shared with the Telangana government, despite it being a new project grounded by the AP government. The Telangana government urged the GRMB to refer its DPRs to Central Water Commission (CWC) for according clearances without any further delay.
In a letter written to the GRMB chairman, the Telangana irrigation engineer-in-chief C. Muralidhar said, "The six DPRs submitted by the Telangana government, namely, Choutpally Hanmanth Reddy lift irrigation scheme (CHRLIS), Chanaka-Korata, Chinna Kaleshwaram (Mukteswar) LIS, Tupakulagudem, Sitarama LIS and Modikuntavagu are all not new projects attracting the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. All these projects are ongoing projects since 2010 and were grounded by the then government in the erstwhile AP. In order to overcome the defective planning in such ongoing projects, the Telangana government has undertaken re-engineering of certain existing and ongoing projects so as to ensure the optimum utilisation of the Godavari water under these projects."
He brought to the notice of the GRMB that all the ongoing projects, together with the completed projects, were well within the entitled/planned utilisation of 967.94 tmc ft as applicable based on the grounded projects in the erstwhile AP.
"The erstwhile AP government undertook the above projects within the earmarked utilisation of 967.4 tmc ft in the Godavari waters allotted by GWDT only duly ensuring that they did not negatively impact the projects downstream (Andhra region wherein the project was grounded with planned utilisation of 518 tmc ft)," Muralidhar noted.
Pointing out that these six projects of the Telangana government had been wrongly shown as unapproved projects in the recent Centre's gazette notification, he said the Telangana government submitted DPRs of these unapproved projects to the CWC for technical clearance within the period of six months as mandated in the gazette.
"Since these projects are taken up prior to formation of Telangana state in June 2014, the GRMB is not mandated to look into aspects such as irrigation planning, cost, cost economics, designs etc, which are to be looked at by the CWC as per the existing procedure for earlier projects," he added.
