Hyderabad: The Telangana state government lodged strong protest in the sub-committee meeting of the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) held here on Wednesday on the issue of GRMB teams visiting and inspecting Devadula lift irrigation project's intake pump house at Gangaram and Geesukonda in Warangal district without involving sub-committee members as part of the exercise to takeover Devadula project.
Sridhar Rao Deshpande, OSD to the Chief Minister, Koteshwar Rao, senior engineer, inter-state affairs and Subramanya Prasad, executive engineer, inter-state affairs, participated in the meeting from Telangana, which was chaired by GRMB member secretary B.P. Pandey.
"We lodged protest over the preparation of handing over note of Devadula (GLIS) intake pump house at Gangaram and Geesukonda cross regulator on Kakatiya canal as the GRMB team visited the sites without involving the sub-committee members," said Sridhar Rao Deshpande.
The Telangana delegation also brought to the notice of the GRMB that that they had not received orders from the state government with respect to projects of Telangana other than Peddavagu medium irrigation project for sharing of information under various clauses of the Centre's gazette notification pertaining to sanctioned posts, plants, machinery, equipment, office premises, furniture, vehicles, DPRs and records maintained since inception.
The Telangana delegation made it clear that they would act as per the directions of the government and that they would not give any commitment on handing over note to the GRMB.
The delegation also argued that since there were no common projects on the Godavari which catered to both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, there was no necessity of deployment of CISF personnel, which would be a burden on the state exchequer.
"As per the clause-4 of GWDT (Godavari Water Dispute Tribunal) award, the states are at liberty to transfer any part of their share to any other basin. Devadula (GLIS) and SRSP were sanctioned and grounded by the combined state of AP. At that time, the government had no objection for the transfer of water from Godavari basin to the areas in Krishna basin to supply irrigation water. Now after bifurcation of state, the AP government is objecting to transfer of water which is not acceptable to the Telangana government and is against the GWDT award," Deshpande added.
The Telangana delegation requested the GRMB member secretary to give sufficient time to study the handing over note as they needed to discuss the issue with senior officials of the irrigation department so as to assess the correctness of the report. The GRMB agreed to defer the discussion on this issue to the next meeting and asked the chief engineers of Telangana and AP to finalise the next date for the meeting.
