Seven ‘approvals’ and one moving target
Harish Rao says Andhra moved to cancel clearances for seven Telangana projects and the GRMB even listed it. The paperwork that proves it isn’t public yet. What the record does show: PRLIS’s DPR was sent back, Sammakka Sagar still needs Chhattisgarh’s nod, and Congress-era “no approvals at all” is a claim, not a register entry.
The approvals record remains spread across several desks.
Content type: analysis
T. Harish Rao lit into the Congress government, saying Andhra Pradesh proposed cancelling approvals for seven Telangana irrigation projects — including Kaleshwaram and Sitarama — and that the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) put the proposal on its agenda. He also said that in three years of Congress rule “not even one project” got approval and “not even one TMC” was cleared. That is the charge; the documents are not in the public pile yet. (Harish Rao at Telangana Bhavan; reported on Aug 5.)
Here is what the record does carry. The GRMB is the body that appraises new Godavari-basin projects of AP and Telangana and gives technical clearance — so if someone tried to play agenda games, it would be here, not on social media. The agenda or minutes that show a cancellation push were not available in the material we could verify.
On clearances, the Centre told Parliament in March 2023 that Telangana’s big projects sit across different buckets: Kaleshwaram and Sammakka Sagar had environmental and forest clearances but not tribal-affairs clearance; Palamuru–Rangareddy (PRLIS) had terms of reference and forest nods but was still moving through appraisal; Sitamma Sagar had no statutory clearances then. That’s the pre-Congress baseline — multiple processes, not one magic “approved” stamp.
What changed since? Two hard pieces. One, PRLIS’s DPR was returned by the Central Water Commission seeking a comprehensive plan. Two, Sammakka Sagar still needs a No-Objection Certificate from the Congress government in Chhattisgarh to secure DPR approval from CWC’s interstate wing; Telangana even set aside Rs 9.88 crore for the backwater-impact survey they asked for. Meanwhile, the state says it is integrating Sitarama, Sitamma Sagar and Devadula to use more Godavari water — activity is not the same thing as a statutory clearance, but it isn’t “nothing happened” either.
So yes, the approvals maze is real, and Congress inherits it. The BJP-led Centre’s clearance trail is also exactly as slow as its paperwork, which is convenient when a non-BJP state is in the queue. But a blanket “not one approval, not one TMC” needs a ledger, not a line. If Andhra really pushed a seven-project cancellation and the GRMB listed it, put the agenda in the sunlight and make the Congress government answer for what it did when it landed on the table. Until then, the only thing moving fast is the blame.