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Water War: Srisailam for power, not irrigation, says K Chandrasekhar Rao

CM was replying to a question during a media conference at Telangana Bhavan.

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday objected yet again to AP releasing Srisailam waters to the Pothireddypadu head regulator. “Andhra Pradesh cannot release water as it likes, but must make a request to the Telangana state government,” he said.

Mr Rao said that the Srisailam dam was conceived and constructed as a hydel project to generate power and not as an irrigation dam.

He was replying to a question during a media conference at Telangana Bhavan on Friday about AP drawing excess water for Pothireddypadu and tampering with telemetry data recordings.

The Chief Minister replied that the Pothireddypadu head regulator was meant to utilise surplus flows at Srisailam dam and not the regular flows as the entire storage at Srisailam was meant to act as a balancing reservoir for Nagarjunasagar. He said TS officials would voice their protest over the AP releases to Pothireddypadu at the meeting of the Krishna River Management Board.

Both TS and AP continue to release water from Srisailam to their respective projects without any official release order being issued by the KRMB, though both states have complained about each other to the Board.

After receiving these complaints, Board chairman S.K. Srivatsava on Thursday issued ‘stop release’ orders to both states and asked them to adhere to the earlier orders.

Any fresh indents from the states could be considered in the next meeting of the board. However, both states have ignored the ‘stop order’ and continued the releases even on Friday.

While placing a fresh indent for drawing of another 15 tmc ft of water, the TS government told the KRMB that the minimum draw down level (MDDL) at Nagarjunasagar must be maintained at 510 feet. At this level, the dam will have hardly 10 tmc ft which will be insufficient for the drinking water requirements in TS and AP (through the Right Branch canal) and hence we need more water and also allocation for Mission Bhagiratha.”

TS Genco, which is utilising Srisailam waters to operate the Left Bank power house for the last few days, told the KRMB that “due to power grid problems we need to generate hydel power for some more days.”

The water used by TS Genco will reach Nagarajunasagar.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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