Pankaj Kumar holds video conference with Telangana, AP CSs on KRMB and GRMB

Hyderabad, Dec 28: Secretary in Union Jal Shakti Ministry Pankaj Kumar on Tuesday held a video conference with Chief Secretaries of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on the implementation of various provisions of the Gazette notification dated 15-7-2021 regarding The Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) and Godavari River Management Board (GRMB).
As per the decisions taken in the apex council meeting held on October 6, 2020, the Minister for Jalshakti requested Chief Minister of Telangana to withdraw the case from Supreme Court to consider to refer the matter to a tribunal under Section 3 of ISRWD act, 1956. Accordingly, Telangana state withdrew its case from the Supreme Court.
Telangana Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar requested the Government of India to take immediate action in this regard. The Union Secretary has reiterated that the Government of India is actively pursuing the matter with Iaw Department, GOI. And soon after receipt of opinion from the law department the matter would be referred to the tribunal, an official statement here said.
Chief Secretary informed that Telangana Government has submitted six detailed project reports (DPRs) of Sita Rama LIS, Sammakka Sagar Project (Thupakulagudem Project), Mukteshwar(Chinna Kaleshwaram) LIS, Choutpally Hanumanth Reddy LIS, Mondikunta Vagu Project and Channaka –Korata Barrage on Godavari River to the CWC in September 2021 which are still pending with the CWC.
The Jalshakti Secretary assured that these projects will be cleared soon.
The Chief Secretary also referred to another five projects in Godavari Basin – Ramappa-Pakala link project, Kaleswaram Project (Additional 1TMC per day), Kandakurthi LI Scheme, Gudem LIS and PV Narasimha Rao Kanthanapally Barrage – which were wrongly included in the unapproved list of projects in gazette notification of GRMB and asked the Secretary to delete them from the list of unapproved projects.
The Chief Secretary observed that as there are no major issues and no common projects for regulation between the two states regarding irrigation projects on Godavari river, there is no need for GRMB.
The Union Secretary also assured the Telangana Government that it would look into the issues raised by the state government on the illegal irrigation projects taken up by Andhra Pradesh on the Krishna river.