AP dusts off old Godavari objections
Telangana’s Godavari projects have faced Andhra Pradesh objections for years. The record shows the BJP-led Centre parked them in DPR-and-clearance limbo — and the Congress-BJP routine of “submit papers, wait forever” still does the work AP wants.
Several Telangana Godavari project DPRs remain listed as unapproved after years of objections and clearance demands.
Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have been fighting over Telangana’s Godavari-basin projects since 2020. That part is not new — it is on the record. According to a Telangana High Court judgment that quotes Union Jal Shakti letters in 2020, Andhra Pradesh wrote on 14 May 2020 objecting to seven Telangana projects, and the Union minister told Telangana not to proceed without DPR appraisal by the Godavari River Management Board/Central Water Commission and sanction by the Apex Council. That pause has lasted years — which, for projects serving Telangana, suits AP fine.
A Central Water Commission note on the Apex Council later summed it up without the poetry: both states took up projects without routing DPRs; AP complained about seven Telangana projects on the Godavari, Telangana complained about AP’s. The BJP-led Centre’s answer since has been process without outcome.
On DPRs, the Union government’s own 14 March 2022 Rajya Sabha table lists several Telangana schemes as “unapproved” while recording DPRs submitted — Modikuntavagu, Choutupally Hanumantha Reddy, Gudem LIS, Mukteshwar/Chinna Kaleshwaram, and Sitarama among them. It also shows the additional 1 TMC/day Kaleshwaram component as not submitted at that time, and Ramappa–Pakhal folded into Tupakulagudem. In 2021, Telangana’s Engineer-in-Chief wrote to the river board saying six DPRs had been sent and that these were old undivided-state works, redesigned — not post-bifurcation freebies.
What we cannot verify yet is the latest claim doing the rounds: that AP has now objected, in a fresh meeting agenda, to a specific seven — a list that mixes Kaleshwaram and Sitarama with Chanaka–Korata, Modikuntavagu, Mukteshwaram and Choutupally Hanumantha Reddy, and even “Kadem–Gudem”. The public record we can cite shows overlapping but different sevens across 2020–2022; the exact new agenda and Telangana’s current letter are not publicly available. GRMB has not published minutes or a view that settles this latest round — or if it has, it has not put them where the public can read them.
The pattern remains the same: Andhra Pradesh objects, the BJP-led Centre’s boards demand another round of paperwork, and the meter on Telangana-side irrigation and drinking-water delivery keeps running. The Congress isn’t any use here either — when it runs a neighbouring government, the silence is strategic; when it sits in Delhi, the files still don’t move. Telangana built; AP complained; the Centre processed. Telangana is still waiting for the part after “processed.”