Tamil Nadu CM meets Andhra counterpart, seeks water release

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam on Thursday met his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu here to seek release of drinking water to Chennai from the Telugu Ganga Project.

Panneerselvam, who had last week written a letter to Naidu on the issue, flew in to meet him personally to make the request due to severity of the problem.

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister is also understood to have discussed other issues.

In a letter on January 7, Panneerselvam had urged Naidu to release water from Krishna river for Chennai's drinking water needs.

Reacting to this, Naidu had said that he need to look into the issue as even Andhra Pradesh is facing drinking water shortage.

Chennai city is facing an acute shortage in the reservoirs.

"I am given to understand that as on 5.1.2017, Kandaleru reservoir has a storage of 13.53,000 million cubic feet (TMC ft). Therefore, AP appears to be in a position to release water from Kandaleru reservoir to Chennai," Panneerselvam wrote.

In 1983, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh signed an agreement whereby annually 12 TMC ft. (excluding evaporation loss) of water from Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra would be released at the Tamil Nadu border to meet the drinking water needs of Chennai.

Normally, 8 TMC feet of water is to be supplied between July and October and another 4 TMC feet from January to April.

--IANS

ms/vd