The Telangana government urged the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) to restrain the Andhra Pradesh government from taking up Chitravathi pumped storage hydel power scheme and other schemes which are linked with GNSS (Galeru Nagari Sujala Sravanthi) and HNSS (Handri Niva Sujala Sravanthi) projects, which draw water from Srisailam without appraisal by the KRMB and approval of Apex Council as per the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.
It also requested the KRMB tribunal to inform the Centre to omit the project components of Nagarjunasagar left canal mentioned in the gazette notification from Schedule-2 till the final KWDT-2 Award.
Additionally, it sought the board to restrict water utilisation up to Kattaleru river as per Joint Project Report 1954 and those areas shall be irrigated through alternate sources such as Chintalapudi LIS etc.
Telangana irrigation engineer-in-chief C. Muralidhar has written two letters to KRMB in this regard.
“Telangana has requested the KRMB to restrain AP from going ahead with Pinnapuram pumped storage hydel power project which is based on Krishna water in December 2020 and September 2021. So far, there is no response received,” he mentioned.
However, to the utter dismay of Telangana, it is learnt that the work is still going on. Further, it is learnt, there are four more pumped storage hydel projects, namely Gandikota (Kadapa), Chitravathi (Anantapur), Somasila (Nellore) and Owk (Kurnool) in Penna basin taken up by AP.
It remains to be seen how this water dispute will create further tensions between the two Telugu states which still bear the wounds of bifurcation.
