Now, let’s look at another claim of Professor Jayashankar: “Nagarjuna
Sagar meant to benefit Andhra and Telangana regions equally is modified in
such a way that 75% of the benefit is accruing to Coastal Andhra reducing the
share of Telangana region to just 25%. Consequently, an area of more than 15
lakh acres is getting irrigation facilities for the first crop and more than half
of it for the second crop in the coastal districts—again, all water-intensive wet
crops. But the Telangana area gets this facility hardly for 5 lakh acres.”
Professor Jayashankar does not provide sources for his claims. Here are
some real facts. I took advantage of the recently passed Right to Information
Act and formally requested the A. P. State Irrigation Department to provide
data for Nagarjuna Sagar Dam water utilization for the last 10 years. Table
11 shows the annual outflows from the right and left canals of the Nagarjuna
Sagar Dam.
NAGARJUNA SAGAR DAM CANAL OUTFLOWS (Table 11)
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Let me remind readers that the right canal water was awarded exclusively
to the Kosta region, whereas 75% of the left canal water was allocated to the
Nizam Telangana districts and the remaining 25% to the Kosta districts.
Not surprisingly, the numbers once again disprove Jayashankar’s claim
that the Telangana region only gets 25% of the water, when it in fact gets well over 40%. The left canal water is mostly used in the Telangana region, and the West Godavari district, which is at the tail end of the canal, rarely gets its 25%
share of water from the left canal.
The surplus water from Nagarjuna Sagar flows down to the Krishna
Barrage. During drought years 2000–2005, the Kosta region did not get any
Krishna River water from the Nizam Telangana area.
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