Tummidihatti barrage: Telangana is open to Maharashtra surveying the land at risk, offers compensation via a joint account

Telangana has decided to meet Maharashtra’s doubts about the Tummidihatti barrage by making an offer, not by arguing. At a review in Hyderabad on Tuesday, 3 November, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy said the state would raise no objection if Maharashtra carried out an independent survey of the land the barrage could put under water on the Maharashtra bank of the Pranahita.

Revanth Reddy said the state would pay fair compensation for every acre in Maharashtra lost to submergence, and was willing to park that money in an account held jointly by both state governments. Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and senior irrigation officials attended the meeting.

He told the officials to hand over, without delay, whatever information Maharashtra asks for, and to have a full record of the land that could go under water on hand. Every relevant paper, including the agreements already signed between the two states, is to be shared, so that the two sides negotiate from a common set of facts. He also asked them to keep ties with the neighbouring government friendly and the conversation open.

Four metres apart since 2016

The review follows Revanth Reddy’s talks in Mumbai on 26 October with Maharashtra’s Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis. Telangana wants the barrage to hold water up to 152 metres at full reservoir level, four metres above the 148 metres the two states settled on in an agreement of 23 August 2016. Its engineers say that at 148 metres the barrage cannot send enough water downstream by gravity, which would mean more pumping and a bigger power bill.

Maharashtra’s worry runs the other way: each extra metre floods more land on the Maharashtra side. Fadnavis has said his government would support the project only if the people and land of Maharashtra are not harmed. In Mumbai he proposed a joint committee of officials from both states to work out the height, how much land would be flooded, which farms would be hit and what compensation would be due.

What is at stake for Adilabad

The Pranahita is a tributary of the Godavari, and the barrage is meant to bring water to about two lakh acres across the tribal belt of erstwhile Adilabad district. Tummidihatti was once the starting point of the Pranahita-Chevella scheme in undivided Andhra Pradesh; after the 2016 agreement capped its height, most of that plan moved downstream to Medigadda under the Kaleshwaram project. The Telangana government did not say when the two states would meet again.