GRMB to meet; Congress wakes up late
Harish Rao says AP is pushing a review of seven Telangana irrigation projects at the GRMB meet on August 18; calls for the items to be dropped, warns of a boycott and a siege if they aren’t. The Congress government, he says, wrote to GRMB only after BRS pressed it — and the TDP chief minister in AP is happy to test Telangana’s patience.
The GRMB’s August 18 meeting has put Telangana’s response on the clock.
BRS leader T Harish Rao on Monday said Andhra Pradesh has asked the Godavari River Management Board to review permissions given to seven Telangana irrigation projects, with the matter slated for discussion in Hyderabad on August 18. He said Telangana has now written to the GRMB objecting to the agenda — “now” doing the work Congress said it had in hand all along.
According to the account he gave, the state responded only after the BRS raised it publicly. His demand is blunt: strike the AP-pushed items from the meeting, or Telangana should consider boycotting it. If the GRMB still goes ahead, he said the BRS will mobilise people to lay siege to the board’s office at Jala Soudha.
“We will not tolerate any attempts by Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu to threaten Telangana’s water rights,” he said — naming the Congress CM here and the TDP CM next door in the same breath. The GRMB’s website lists the board and its functions, but no public agenda for August 18 was visible. The Congress government in Telangana and the TDP government in Andhra Pradesh have not bothered to set out their case on the record; the meeting clock is still running.