Andhra stuck with Krishna's downside

Hyderabad: As the last of the three riparian states of river Krishna, Andhra Pradesh (AP) has its own advantages and disadvantages in the matter of utilisation of one of the biggest rivers in the country.

While it has been able to utilise as much surplus water as it needed, after being let off by Maharashtra and Karnataka, and despite staking claims on the entire surplus water before the Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal, the disadvantages have now come to the fore.

On one hand Maharahstra and Karnataka have gone all out in the recent years to maximise the utilisation of Krishna river water by building more and more irrigation projects.

This, while AP was left to fend for itself in case of heavy seasonal inflows as in the case of monsoons in 2009.

The Krishna Basin in AP recorded an inflow of 2.5 million cusecs of water in October last year, resulting in the worst floods in ten thousand years, with an estimated property and crop loss of about Rs120 billion (Dh9.69 billion).

This brought to fore the issue of coordination or a lack of it between AP and Karnataka on the sharing of data with regard to the flow of Krishna waters from Karnataka to AP.

Criticism

There was criticism that Karnataka did not keep the AP government fully informed about the heavy and sudden discharge of water from two of its major projects Almatti and Narayanpur.

The earlier Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal had allocated 811, 734 and 585 thousand million cubic feet of Krishna water to AP, Karnataka and Maharashtra respectively on the basis of 75 per cent dependability flow.

While allowing AP to use the surplus or unutilised water, the Tribunal had made it clear that it could not acquire any rights to the excess water.