At a time Chennai city is facing acute drinking water shortage due to deficient northeast monsoon, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam reaching Andhra Pradesh’s makeshift secretariat in Velagapudi tomorrow afternoon, to meet his counterpart in Chandrababu Naidu tomorrow, seeking immediate release of Telugu Ganga water.
According to official sources, both the chief minister will be meeting at 1 pm. Last week, Panneerselvam had written a letter to Chandrababu Naidu seeking immediate release of water to Chennai. This may be the first time that a Tamil Nadu chief minister himself is visiting Andhra Pradesh to discuss on this issue.
In his letter on January 7, Pannerselvan has sought Chandrababu’s intervention to ensure the immediate release of `agreed’ quantum of water from the state’s Kandaleru reservoir to Tamil Nadu. Stating that as per his information, the water level at Kandaleru reservoir was 13.5 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet). Therefore, he said that AP appears to be in a position to release water for Chennai city.
Emphasising on the deficit faced by Tamil Nadu as a whole and Chennai in particular, the CM stated that northeast monsoon, through which the state receives a bulk of its rainfall, was deficient by at least 57% this season, leading to a steep fall in the city’s drinking water reserves. He expressed concern that the meager storage currently available needs to be augmented to meet the drinking water supply requirements of Chennai city over the next few months.
Pointing out to the 1983 interstate agreement between the two states, which promises a quantum of 12 tmcft of water to be released at the Tamil Nadu border in two spells from the Kandaleru reservoir, the Tamil Nadu chief minister said that only 0.99tmcft has been realised at the TN border between October and December last year. The agreement mandates a supply of 8 tmcft of water from July to October and 4tmcft from January to April to the state.
However, AP officials’ contention was that Tamil Nadu owes over Rs 400 crore to AP as the former’s share in the Telugu Ganga project. Project was originally formulated by chief ministers of both the states N T Rama Rao and M G Ramachadnran on cost-sharing basis.
