Not all has been well between the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for quite some time now, especially with regard to water issues concerning the Krishna river. Recently, the Andhra Pradesh government decided to go ahead with the construction of two new barrages across the Krishna river in the downstream of Prakasam Barrage.
This was an idea that was conceived by Chandrababu Naidu when he was the Chief Minister during 2014-19. However, he had sidelined the idea in favor of building Amaravati as a world-class capital. Of course, the YSRCP government had then scarpped every plan made by the TDP government after it came to power in 2019. In 2020 though, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy officially announced his government’s plan of building new barrages across the Krishna river. Nothing took place after that, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
With this idea now cropping up once again, now that a state of normalcy is returning everywhere, the Telangana government reacted quite sharply to the idea. The Telangana government has already written two letters to the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) protesting against the two proposals. In the letters, it mentioned how the AP government is going against norms, by not getting a clearance from the KRMB first, before going ahead with its idea, and it also took issue with the fact that building two new barrages would only worsen the shortage of drinking water in Telangana state. It is now to be seen how the AP government would react to this.