Vijayawada: Tamil Nadu Cheif Minister O. Panneerselvam is coming to Vijayawada on January 12 to meet and request Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on continuance of drinking water to Chennai city from the Telugu Ganga Project.
In this regard, the Mr Panneerselvam on January 7 wrote a letter to Mr Naidu requesting to release water from Krishna river for Chennai city’s drinking water needs. Based on the severity of the issue, he will personally call on the AP Chief Minister.
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s security has come to Vijayawada on Wednesday and conducted a trial run from a private hotel where he is supposed to stay to the Chief Ministers Camp office.
In a letter to Mr Naidu, Mr Panneerselvam said, “I write seeking your urgent personal intervention for the release of Krishna water to meet the drinking water supply to Chennai city which is facing an acute shortage in the reservoirs.”
According to Mr Panneerselvam, Chen-nai is critically dependent on the release of Krishna water in order to manage the difficult situation this year. “I am given to understand that as on 5.1.2017, Kandaleru reservoir has a storage of 13.53,000 million cubic feet (TMC ft). Therefore, AP appears to be in a position to release water from Kandaleru reservoir to Chennai,” Mr Panneer-selvam told Mr Naidu.
In 1983, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh signed an agreement whereby annually 12 TMC ft. (excluding evaporation loss) of water from Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra would be released at the Tamil Nadu border to meet the drinking water needs of Chennai.
Normally, 8 TMC feet of water is to be supplied between July and October and another 4 TMC feet from January to April. Reacting to this, Mr Naidu in his recent tour to Chennai said, “There is scarcity of drinking water even for us, which I had to pursue further on providing driniking water to Chennai.”
