Hyderabad: The release of water into the Pothireddypadu head regulator from the Srisailam dam by the Andhra Pradesh government has created a fresh controversy, with the Telangana state government lodging a formal complaint with the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB).
The TS government has alleged that AP officials had tampered with the telemetry systems related to releases to Pothireddypadu, and sought immediate rectification.
Irrigation minister T. Harish Rao reviewed the situation on Wednesday evening on the basis of a note submitted by the chief engineer of the Nagar-junasagar dam regarding Srisailam dam officials releasing excess waters to the head regulator, over and above the permitted usage fixed by KRMB in its latest orders.
On the instructions of Mr Rao, engineer-in-chief C. Muralidhar made the complaint before the KRMB.
Mr Harish Rao also spoke to KRMB chairman S.K. Srivatsava over the phone and asked him to take immediate steps to rectify the situation. He was assured by the KRMB that an urgent meeting would be called to examine the functioning of the telemetry systems and the allegations of tampering.
In his complaint, Mr Muralidhar said, “The calibration of data in respect of telemetry on Pothireddy-padu was completed as per the schedule given by the KRMB team on September 20 and 21 with the help of the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). The ADCP was verified by the KRMB at Tungabhadra Board before being put to use under the Srisailam reservoir.”
He said the real time calibrated data made available in the KRMB website since September 22 had fairly tallied with the manual discharge calculated with the Orifice formula.
“Subsequently, variation of discharge from the formula and real time telemetry was observed. On 24th September the under-reporting of discharge continued, which is 12,026 cusecs as per calibrated telemetry figure against the reported manual figure of 10,500 cusecs which was about 15 per cent,” he said.
The matter was reported to the KRMB member secretary telephonically to immediately adopt the calibrated telemetry figures as under-reporting of the discharge was very huge.
Mr Muralidhar went on to allege that on the same day as the matter was reported to KRMB, the telemetry system was tampered with by M/s Mechactronics Systems and all the earlier calibrated recorded data was wiped out and new data was loaded in the system.
He wrote that tampering with data “is very serious in nature and is tantamount to breach of contract and the agency is liable for immediate black listing.”
Mr Muralidhar also alleged that the action of the telemetry agency in tampering with the recorded data would not have been done on its own and it was forced to manipulate the data by those concerned.
