GRMB’s 18th agenda? Show the paper

BRS’ T. Harish Rao wrote to the Union Jal Shakti minister and secretary on 7 August, asking them to strike agenda items 18.3.1, 18.3.6 and 18.3.11 from the Godavari River Management Board’s 18th meeting. He says those entries reopen seven Telangana projects already examined by the Centre’s own system — CWC appraisals, TAC scrutiny and clearances — and that the Board has no business second-guessing them. That account is from a published report; the letter and the agenda are not on the GRMB site yet.

Here is the record that does exist. The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 sets up GRMB to administer and regulate notified projects, with the Apex Council supervising it and new projects routed through CWC appraisal “wherever required”. None of that reads like licence to relitigate Delhi’s past approvals, and if the BJP-led Centre thinks it is, it can try saying so on the record instead of parking it in agenda code.

Also on record: CWC’s own publications show Telangana schemes moving through appraisal stages in recent years — Sammakka Sagar, Mukteshwar and Sita Rama marked “under examination” across 2023–25, with Sammakka Sagar still in review pending inter-state steps. Which is exactly why blanket language about “all approvals” needs the document-by-document list, and why a Board meeting that supposedly reopens seven projects should publish its brief instead of playing hide-and-seek.

Harish Rao has asked the Union ministry to intervene under Section 85 of the Act and to clear Sammakka Sagar’s pending permissions. The GRMB site does not carry the 18th agenda or minutes as of its last update. The BJP-led Centre and the Board can release them today if they want to prove this isn’t a backdoor wobble on Telangana’s assets. The longer they don’t, the easier the read: evade first, explain never.