Brijesh Kumar Tribunal’s orders on sharing of river Krishna waters by Andhra Pradesh with Karnataka and Maharashtra has sparked off protest across coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions. Both farmers and the political parties across the State were up in arms against the tribunal’s award as it has made the future of several irrigation projects uncertain by increasing the right of Karnataka.
With the Tribunal giving its nod to Karnataka to increase the height of the controversial Almatti dam to 524.256 metres, a big question mark has been put on the availability of waters to downstream Andhra Pradesh.
A worried Andhra Pradesh Government was now planning to move the Supreme Court to get a stay order against the Tribunal’s orders. A Special leave petition of AP Government was already pending in the Supreme Court preventing the notification of the final award in the
Central Government Gazette immediately.
In a strong reaction to the final award announced on Friday, both the Government and the Opposition have described it as “death knell” for the farmers of Andhra Pradesh. Several Ministers have also come out in open demanding that the State Government should immediately take the matters to the apex court while the Opposition parties have
laid the blame for the situation at the doors of the former
Chief Minister late YS Rajashekhar Reddy.
Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu recalled that YSR had written to the Centre saying Andhra Pradesh does not require surplus waters of river Krishna.
Making matters worse, this blow came at a time when AP was on the brink of bifurcation and the political and administrative uncertainty in the State has further compounded the issue of legal challenge to the tribunal’s award which will be valid till 2050.
The biggest fall out of the new award is that it has put seven irrigation projects of Andhra Pradesh in danger as they were planned on the basis of surplus waters. They include three in Telangana region (Nettampadu, Kalwakurthy and Srisailam left Bank Canal), three in Rayalaseema (Telugu Ganga, Handri-Neeva and Galeru Nagari) and one Veligonda in Andhra. These projects were to use 227.5 tmc ft but the new award does not recognise these surplus waters putting the entire Krishna delta in danger.
Under the award announced by Justic Brijesh Kumar tribunal, a drastic change has come in to effect in the formula governing the sharing of waters by three riparian States. While the Bachawat tribunal, which lapsed in 2000 has quantified the availability of Krishna waters at 2130 tmc ft on 75 per cent dependable flow. (This means the water available in 75 of the past 100 years). After distributing this water among the three States, Bachawat award had identified another 300 tmc ft of surplus water and allowed Andhra Pradesh to use it without claiming a right over it.
But Brijesh Kumar tribunal has reduced the dependability to 65 per cent and increased the total availability of water to 2580 tmf and redistributed it among the three States. Thus it does not recognise any surplus waters in river Krishna.
Under the new distribution, AP has got 1005 tmc ft of water against 811 it had got from Bachawat tribunal. Karnataka’s share has gone up from 734 tmc ft to 907 and Maharashtra’s share has increased from
585 to 666 tmc ft.
The only gain for Andhra Pradesh was that the tribunal gave 4 tmc ft of water for Rajolibanda Diversion scheme right canal.