Jurala farmers face 11 charges; Telangana’s water order is missing
The Congress government has documented alleged gate damage in detail, but not published the decision that kept irrigation water shut.
The case file is available; the water order is not.
The Telangana government has found plenty of paper for booking 14 Jurala farmers. It has not found the same enthusiasm for publishing the paper behind the water decision that triggered the confrontation.
Amarchinta police registered a case on September 20 against the farmers after an Irrigation Department complaint over events at the Priyadarshini Jurala Project’s Left Main Canal regulator on September 19. The complaint, filed by Deputy Executive Engineer SM Samiullah, alleges that protesters blocked the approach road, restricted officials, pushed and manhandled them, snatched phones, damaged two control-room doors and broke locks before manually opening the gates. The case invokes nine provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, read with Section 190, and Section 3 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act. These remain allegations; no charge sheet or court finding establishing guilt was found. [1]
The protest itself is not in doubt. Multiple reports record farmers demanding water for standing crops, opening the Left Canal regulator after officials cited low storage or the need for higher clearance, and officials later closing it. One contemporaneous report put live storage at 5.1 TMC ft against a gross capacity of 8.81 TMC ft, while also recording the farmers’ disagreement with the official explanation. The only accessible KRMB reading supplied here is from July 5, not September 19, so it cannot settle the storage question on the day. [2][3][4][6]
That is the administrative gap. The Congress government in Telangana has placed a detailed account of alleged damage before the public, but no published order, release schedule, reservoir bulletin, crop-water assessment or written explanation of why water was not released on September 19. The BRS has demanded that the cases be withdrawn and the government apologise; that is a political demand, not proof that every allegation is false. [5]
If the administration wants farmers judged by the record, it should publish its own record first. So far, the government has made the criminal case easier to find than the water decision that made the protest inevitable.