Hyderabad: Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy extended an open invitation to Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) for a discussion on the Krishna and Godavari river basins, suggesting that if KCR’s health did not permit him to attend the Assembly, the discussion could even be held at his farmhouse in Erravelli.
The offer came on Wednesday, July 9, after irrigation minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy gave a detailed presentation on Krishna basin water sharing between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to Congress MLAs, MLCs, MPs, and party office bearers at Praja Bhavan.
Revanth Reddy, in his concluding remarks, said he would not reduce democratic dialogue to “clubs and pubs” and insisted on holding meaningful discussions on the Assembly floor. He urged KCR, as Leader of the Opposition, to formally write to the Speaker requesting a special session of the Assembly to discuss Krishna and Godavari river issues separately.
“I promise you that I will sit in the discussion from the beginning till the end. We will ensure that your respect will be protected by the house,” the chief minister assured KCR.
He also stated that the state government would place a policy document, on which KCR could give his suggestions, so that the document could also be amended accordingly.
However, if KCR wanted, the chief minister said the discussion could be held at Erravelli farmhouse, where he would not only send subject matter experts and ministers for the discussion, but would also personally attend the discussion.
Without taking the name of BRS working president KT Rama Rao (KTR), Revanth Reddy said it was below his stature to do so.
Talking about the injustice done to Telangana by changing the location of the Palamuru Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme (PRLIS) by KCR, Revanth Reddy said that if the water could be drawn from Jurala Project where the river enters Telangana, Andhra Pradesh couldn’t have had the advantage of building its projects downstream, in the Srisailam backwaters.
“The decision taken to draw water through PRLIS from Srisailam backwaters was taken in arrogance and due to corrupt thinking,” he said.
More than injustice to Telangana in water sharing, the chief minister said that there was an impending risk of hydropower projects at Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar and Pulichintala going defunct in the future.
“Today, we are buying power at Rs 10 per unit when the peak demand is more. The power generated through hydropower projects costs only Rs 0.25 to Rs 0.50 per unit. Because of giving away our state’s share of Krishna water to AP, there will be hardly any water for power generation in the future,” Revanth Reddy pointed out.
The chief minister also blamed KCR for reducing the originally intended capacity of drawing 2 TMC water from the Krishna river through PRLIS to only 1 TMC, while inflating the project’s cost estimates.
“KCR did thousands of times more injustice to Telangana than the rulers of the undivided Andhra Pradesh. If lashes are given as punishment, KCR deserves a hundred lashes,” he opined.
Talking about the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme, Revanth Reddy said that KCR had removed certain packages of the originally designed Kaleshwaram project (actually named Dr BR Ambedkar Pranahitha Chevella Sujala Sravanthi) after redesigning it.
He said packages 23, 24 and 26 for which works worth hundreds of crores were done during the Congress government before 2014, were removed from the redesigned project, which he claimed, did injustice to Nalgonda and Rangareddy districts by removing almost 6.5 lakh acres of new ayacut which should have been created under the project.
“KCR then said that Rangareddy fell under Krishna basin, and if we shift Godavari waters to Rangareddy district, which comes under Krishna basin, it could work against the state’s interests in the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal. “On one side, he gave go-ahead to AP to shift water from the Godavari basin to the Pennar basin, but when it came to utilising the water within the state, this is what he said,” the chief minister noted.
Talking about the power consumption for irrigation projects before and after 2014, Revanth Reddy said that while Congress irrigated 54 lakh acres in Telangana in the undivided state by spending Rs 93,000 per acre for power utilisation, the BRS government spent Rs 11.47 lakh per acre on power to irrigate 15 lakh acres.
