Injustice done to TS: Cabinet

‘Grave areas’ in Tribunal verdict: TS

A TS Cabinet subcommittee has identified “very grave areas” in which the Justice Brijesh Kumar Tribunal has done “injustice” to the state over distributing Krishna river waters in its recent verdict. The committee vetted the verdict for two hours on Saturday and will continue the exercise on Saturday.

The tribunal had restricted the scope of AP Reorganisation Act Section 89, which deals with sharing Krishna waters, to the two Telugu states. The tribunal will now distribute 1001 tmc ft of water, that was awarded to undivided Andhra Pradesh, between the two states.

A senior irrigation official said that the committee felt that the new projects taken up by the TS government, like the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy and Dindi, besides the ongoing Nettempadu, Kalwakurthy and other lift irrigation schemes would be deprived of water as the tribunal verdict did not provide any relief to TS.

On the other side, a source in the AP irrigation department said that the government was not interested in taking up the matter in the apex court as it was felt that the “interests of Krishna river projects are not breached by tribunal verdict.” The source said the verdict was “very supportive” of AP.

A senior AP official said the government felt that the contentions of the TS government were “more against AP projects rather than the projects taken up upstream by Karnataka and Maharashtra.”

He said the tribunal had earlier protected water allocations made to undivided AP; most of those projects are now in residuary AP. The tribunal had allocated Krishna water to various projects based on 65 per cent dependability, most of which are in Rayalaseema.

He said that the tribunal had set aside the contention of the TS government that over 350 tmc ft of Krishna water was allowed to be utilised by AP (Nagarjunasagar right canal and other projects) outside of Krishna basin. This was “most heartening for us,” he said.