Telangana Government has requested the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) to restrain Andhra Pradesh from drawing Tungabhadra water through 13 lift irrigation schemes including Guru Ranghavendra lift between Rajolibanda Diversion Scheme (RDS) anicut and Sunkesula Barrage stating that all of them are unauthorised, have no approval and allocation of water.
Engineer-in-Chief (General-Irrigation) of Telangana C. Muralidhar, in a letter addressed to Chairman of KRMB M.P. Singh, explained that AP had taken up the new schemes to lift over 5.37 tmc ft water from the right bank of Tungabhadra river starting from the downstream of RDS to Sunkesula. He stated that the lift irrigation schemes were unauthorised as they were neither appraised by the river board or Central Water Commission nor approved by the Apex Council.
Further, he also asked the river board Chairman to instruct the board office to account for the utilisation of water made by AP through the 13 lift irrigation schemes during the current water year.
He stated that the unauthorised lift irrigation schemes include Madhavaram, Basaladoddi, Suguru, Chilakaladona, Pulachintha, Soganuru, Chinthamanupalli, Krishnadoddi, Mugaladoddi and Remata besides Guru Raghavendra, which in all have 18 lifts together.
In another letter, the Telangana ENC wrote to the KRMB Chairman to include some terms of reference for conducting a study to distribute water at RDS among Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 10:7 tmc ft ratio, which he said was not the intent of KWDT-I Award. He pointed out that Telangana had been requesting the board to take over RDS Anicut to ensure that 15.9 tmc ft water allocated to Telangana was realised.
He also brought to the river board Chairman’s notice that AP was utilising more than its share of water allocated to KC Canal for the last three decades and the issue of regulated releases, as being proposed by the river board, does not arise.
The ENC suggested that the study desired to be conducted by the river board shall include removing all the mound, sand deposits and silt accumulated in between the head regulator and the Rajoli Vagu rivulet joining Tungabhadra river, whether RDS canal head regulator and common canal could draw its designed discharge to ensure 770 cusecs at 42.60 km (Karnataka-Telangana border) of the canal and others.
