Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy has written to his Maharashtra counterpart, Devendra Fadnavis, seeking time to discuss the Tummidihatti barrage, now part of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS).

Reddy informed Fadnavis that the Telangana irrigation officials needed time to prepare for the discussion and urged the latter to fix a date for discussing the issue.

The letter mentioned that the Maharashtra government had agreed to allow a height of 148 meter for Tummidihatti barrage’s full reservoir level (FRL), not enough to fulfil the irrigation needs of Telangana.

If Telangana is allowed to increase the dam’s height, it would allow the flow of Godavari waters through gravity. This would not cause any submergence on the Maharashtra side.

The state government has been considering building the Tummidihatti barrage at a height of 150 meter FRL, as a possible middle ground for negotiations with the Maharashtra government.

Originally, the Dr BR Ambedkar Pranahita-Chevella Sujala Sravanthi project drew Godavari from Tummidihatti. However, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government redesigned the project to source the river water from the Medigadda barrage, which is now defunct.

The then Maharashtra government declined K Chandrasekhar Rao-led government’s offer to raise the height to 152 meter, following which the BRS agreed in principle to maintain the Full Reservoir Level (FRL) at 148 metres. KCR had termed it a win-win situation for both states.

However, the Congress has been claiming that if the Kaleshwaram project had been constructed at Tummidihatti instead of Medigadda, there would have been no need to lift water to such great heights.

Congress leaders have repeatedly argued that building the project at Tummidihatti, as originally proposed, would have allowed Godavari waters to flow by gravity to the Yellampalli Project, from where irrigation could have been extended up to Chevella in Rangareddy district.

Even the Justice PC Ghose Commission of Inquiry constituted by the Congress government had found fault with the decision to shift the Kaleshwaram project from Tummidihatti to Medigadda.

In recent times, the Congress government has been aggressively moving towards constructing the project at Tummidihatti, as the Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages under the Kaleshwaram project have been declared defunct.

It needs to be seen how the Congress government negotiates an increase in the height of the FRL of the Tummidihatti barrage with the Maharashtra government, which has, on multiple occasions, rejected the previous BRS government’s proposals after the formation of Telangana in 2014, as well as the Congress government’s proposals in the undivided Andhra Pradesh.