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Two days ago, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy declared that the division of AP would lead to water wars between the people of Telangana and Seemandhra regions, which comprise coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema districts. He made this statement while questioning the wisdom of Congress leadership in favouring the creation of Telangana state.
On Tuesday, his cabinet colleague and major irrigation minister P Sudarshan Reddy completely contradicted with his leader by saying there was no scope for any such eventuality post bifurcation and also there was no basis for people to fear that the water would stop reaching their farmlands if the state gets divided.
While the chief minister represents Chittoor district in the Seemandhra region, which has been witnessing agitations opposing the state bifurcation, the irrigation minister hails from Nizamabad district in the Telangana region whose leaders have been fighting for separate statehood.
“No water war will happen even after AP gets divided into two states because the existing systems and practices involving the utilisation of allocated water under various projects and canals in different districts can never be altered,” the irrigation minister said. "This is not just my personal view but the government's position. Senior officers of the irrigation department will say the same thing,” he added.
According to the minister, the water allocated to AP in Krishna and Godavari basins is further redistributed up to the level of respective projects, both existing and ongoing, and there would be a board or a committee to oversee the utilisation if it comes to the interstate sharing. “We have the Tungabhadra Water Board regulating the water utilisation between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh for the past 60 years without any major hitch. If at all we have a problem with Karnataka it was because they were utilising water in excess of the allocation, which can be resolved,” the minister added.
The irrigation infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh is built on two major river systems, namely Krishna and Godavari, cutting across Telangana and coastal Andhra regions. AP has an allocation of 811 tmc (thousand million cubic) of assured water, and 227.5 tmc of surplus water in the Krishna basin and 1,486.16 tmc of water in the Godavari basin. Krishna water is again shared among the three regions -- 410.84 tmc for coastal Andhra, 251.7 tmc for Rayalaseema and 375.96 tmc for Telangana.
Utilisation of 912.251 tmc of water for Telangana and 509.546 tmc of water for coastal Andhra was proposed in the Godavari basin as close to 80 per cent of the river catchment in AP falls in the Telangana region, according to government statistics.
The minister maintained that the ongoing projects in all the regions were proposed to utilise the full extent of these allocations and the state bifurcation would not come in the way of using the same.
