Stating that the award by the Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal over the sharing of River Krishna waters was detrimental to the state’s interests, All India Congress Committee secretary Ponguleti Sudhakar on Saturday urged chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to file an appeal against the verdict.
Talking to media person at Gandhi Bhavan, Mr Sudhakar said that at least 7 to 8 irrigation projects in the state would suffer if the verdict is accepted by the government without contest. Emphasizing on the need to appeal against the Tribunal’s decision, Mr Sudhakar said that a large number of areas in Rayalaseema and Telangana regions would suffer from lack of adequate water.
The AICC secretary also called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to interfere in the matter and ensure that Andhra Pradesh does not lose out because of the verdict.
Mr Sudhakar also condemned the attempts by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu for trying to pin the blame for the adverse verdict on the Congress. He reminded Mr Naidu that he had conveniently failed to object when the Almatti Dam work was taken up during the time when HD Deve Gowda was the prime minister.
Mr Sudhakar said that it was the Congress which had raised the issue of the raising of the Almatti Dam’s height and had staged dharnas in protest. He said that Mr Naidu was the ‘king maker’ at that time and yet had done nothing to stop the construction work on the Almatti dam.
Earlier, senior Telugu Desam Party leader K Yerrannaidu had said the state, which was known as Annapurna, would turn into a desert because of the verdict. He had, speaking for the TDP, said that the Tribunal verdict not only allowed the surplus waters to be shared by all the three States, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh , and also allowed Karnataka to raise the height of the controversial Almatti Dam from 519.60 meters to 524.265 meters, which was a severe blow to farm community.
Pinning the blame at the state government for not arguing the case strongly, Mr Yerrannaidu had lamented that the state has got a raw deal in the verdict.
The TDP had said the verdict would ground construction of seven irrigation projects, Nettampadu, Galeru-Nagari, Kalwakurthy, Handri-Neva, Veligonda, on Krishna River.