The three-member committee of the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) allocated 9 tmcft to Andhra Pradesh and 24 tmcft to Telangana at its meeting in Hyderabad on Friday.
The committee, comprising the board’s member-secretary and the Engineers-in-Chief of the respective States, made specific allocation to the different canals of the Nagarjuna Sagar Project.
State’s contention
There was a heated discussion over the extent of transmission losses in the Nagarjuna Sagar Left Canal, which passed through lands in Telangana. While the Telangana Engineer-in-Chief insisted that the transmission loss was as high as 40%, his Andhra Pradesh counterpart said a joint experts committee had fixed the losses at 26.7%.
The Andhra Pradesh Engineer-in-Chief also argued that the transmission losses in Telangana should not be passed to Andhra Pradesh.
The KRMB member-secretary said the dispute would be referred again to the joint experts committee on transmission losses.
The committee also decided to factor into the calculations of the water pumped from the Srisailam tailpond into the reservoir.
It was also decided that 15 tmcft would be released from Srisailam to Nagarjuna Sagar as compensation for the 33 tmcft that was going to be released from Nagarjuna Sagar.
There was a difference of opinion between the Engineers-in-Chief on drawing water below the minimum draw down level (MDDL) to save standing crop.
While Andhra Pradesh said it was okay, Telangana opposed it.
