Water disputes affect AP-TS ties

About `1,51,349 crore under capital heads, `28,099 crore under loans and advances,

`4,474 crore under deposits and advances, `238 crore under suspense and miscellaneous, and `310 crore under remittances are yet to be apportioned even after seven years of bifurcation.

While the ‘political rivalry’ between Chief Ministers of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, K. Chandrashekar Rao and, at that time, N. Chandrababu Naidu, respectively was attributed to delay in resolution of bifurcation issues between 2014 and 2019, the situation did not improve much even after the change of guard in AP after the YSRC government headed by Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy stormed to power in

2019.

Jagan Mohan Reddy extended a ‘friendly hand’ to Chandrashekar Rao within days of becoming the Chief Minister by handing over all government buildings in Hyderabad including Secretariat and Legislative Assembly buildings to the Telangana state government which Naidu had refused to do till 2019 even after shifting the AP administration to Amaravati in 2016.

Though Chandrashekar Rao and Jagan Mohan Reddy initially displayed bonhomie by meeting over half a dozen times to resolve bifurcation issues, the situation is back to square one after the AP CM launched Rayalaseema lift irrigation scheme in May

2019 to divert Srisailam water, which fuelled ‘water disputes’ between both the states again after which both the Chief Ministers never met.

Even the Chief Secretarylevel talks between the states to resolve bifurcation issues came to a halt in January 2019. The Centre, which is supposed to hold regular meetings with Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state governments to resolve bifurcation issues, did not conduct a meeting for nearly two years after August

2019 and recently held a meeting in April which ended abruptly with no consensus reached on any issue.