AP blocks visit, wants trust
BRS leaders say Andhra Police stopped them en route to Pothireddypadu. The BJP-led Centre’s KRMB paperwork shows the fight over Krishna water is live; Andhra’s Congress government still hasn’t explained why a Telangana team can’t even look at the regulator.
The Pothireddypadu regulator remains at the centre of an unresolved Krishna water dispute.
A BRS delegation led by former Telangana minister S. Niranjan Reddy was stopped by Andhra Pradesh Police at Jupadu Bunglow in Nandyal on Wednesday and told it had “no permission to proceed to Pothireddypadu,” according to a report of the incident. The group said it was headed to inspect the head regulator linked to Telangana farmers, not to stage a protest.
The edge here isn’t subtle. The Congress government in Andhra blocked a Telangana party’s leaders from seeing a structure that decides whether our fields get water, then offered a chat with a DSP instead. Telangana’s side says it went to “expose the Congress government’s failure” and to check alleged heavy drawal through Pothireddypadu; those specific daily figures are the BRS leaders’ claims and remain unverified in the public record.
The paperwork is clear on one thing: the Krishna fight is ongoing. The KRMB’s 2023–24 annual report records Andhra pressing for a 66:34 split and Telangana for 50:50; no consensus, punted to the Apex Council. Earlier KRMB reports show AP has historically drawn substantial volumes via Pothireddypadu — 109.694 TMC in 2021–22 and 169.668 TMC in 2019–20 — establishing why an on-ground look matters, even if they do not confirm any “4–5 TMC a day” right now. Engineering documents list Pothireddypadu as the gate that feeds the Srisailam Right Branch system; design filings for the Rayalaseema Lift even speak of 3 TMC per day supplementation downstream — technical context, not a logbook of August flows.
So we have a border regulator central to an unresolved allocation, a Telangana delegation that says it came to inspect, and Andhra’s Congress government slamming the gate on sight. The BJP-led Centre’s board records the dispute; Andhra still hasn’t explained why Telangana’s leaders can’t see the door everyone knows the water goes through.