Vijayawada, January 01: The leaders of farmers’ organisations in coastal districts are seething with rage over the Justice Brijesh Kumar Tribunal award which, according to them, had denied whatever little water that trickles through the mighty Krishna river to AP.
The Krishna Delta Protection Committee has called upon people’s representatives to fight the injustice and ensure that the award is reviewed. According to Mandali Budha Prasad, former minister and member of the committee, an all-party meeting will soon be convened in Vijayawada to decide the future course of action.
He said estimation of assured water on the basis of 75 percent dependability instead of 65 percent dependability had, in fact, spelt doom for the state in the form of decreased allocation of water.
Prasad said: “December 30 will go down in the history of AP as a black day. The award has done a great injustice to farmers in the delta area.” Calculating availability of assured water in Krishna on the basis of 75 percent dependability was misleading since that much water would not be available. In the Bachawat Tribunal, the estimate was made based on the more realistic 65 percent dependability.
Though the availability looks more if dependability is raised to 75 percent, in actual terms, it might not be that much. And this hypothetical quantum of water has been apportioned among the states with increase in volume to upper riparian states which means AP would get less than what it was getting under the Bachawat Tribunal.
The tribunal calculated that assured water would be of the order of 2,578 tmcft. But the realistic figure was 2,060 tmcft which was arrived at after taking into consideration dependability at 65 percent, he said.
Andhra Pradesh, which had the freedom to use all surplus water (not quantified in the Bachawat Tribunal) now has access to only 190 tmcft. The Brijesh Kumar Tribunal had estimated that the total surplus water would be 448 tmcft of which the state could use only 190 tmcft.
Akkineni Bhavani Prasad, founder of the Kisan Service Organisation and an expert on the issue, said the Bachawath Tribunal had taken 78 years, from 1894 to 1971, to count the average water flow in the Krishna river, but the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal took only 47 years into count. He said the tribunal decision to allow Karnataka to increase Almatti project height from 519 metres to 524 metres also costs the state dearly.
–Agencies