Shivangi Prakash-
Andhra Pradesh has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court over a water-sharing dispute with Telangana on the Krishna River.
Under Section 87 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, the writ petition asks the Union of India to notify the Krishna River Management Board’s (KRMB) jurisdiction. It further asked the Court to order KRMB to follow the ruling of the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (KWDT-I) till their jurisdiction is established.
The aforementioned KWDT judgement, made under Sections 5(2) and 5(3) of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 (Act, 1956), gave the erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh the freedom to utilize surplus flows over and beyond 75% predictable flows, but without any control over how they were used.
This ruling was upheld by the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal II in 2004. (KWDT-II). Following the 2014 bifurcation of the erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh into the States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the two States agreed that the 811 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) allocation made by the KWDT-I would be allocated in such a way that the State of Telangana would have 299 TMC and the State of Andhra Pradesh would have 512 TMC. This agreement (2015 Agreement) was previously signed and is currently being reviewed by KRMB.
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The current petition stems from allegations that the State of Telangana is indiscriminately draining water for electricity purposes, in violation of the Reservoirs’ integrated operating norm and the 2015 Agreement’s stipulations.
Advocate G Umapathy drafted the petition, which was settled by Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave and filed through Advocate Mahfooz Nazki.
According to the plea, Telangana is allegedly hurting Andhra Pradesh’s water supply for irrigation and other reasons due to a lack of movement on notification of KRMB’s jurisdiction. The use of water from the Srisailam Dam project for the generation of power in Telangana State has resulted in depletion, as evidenced by ‘daily readings’ supplied by Authorities of that Dam.
In this regard, the petition states, “This has caused immense hardship for people of State of Andhra Pradesh as availability of water has been seriously prejudiced by depletion in the Srisailam Dam project as well as other projects such as the Nagarjuna Sagar Project and the Pulichintala Project.”
