After getting locked in a legal battle with Karnataka over border villages, Maharashtra is facing the heat from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh over the sharing of Godavari water.
After getting locked in a legal battle with Karnataka over border villages, Maharashtra is facing the heat from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh (AP) over the sharing of Godavari water. While the long-running dispute over the Babhli dam in the Nanded district is still pending with the Supreme Court, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief and former AP chief minister Chandrababu Naidu stirred a political controversy by entering the district on Friday to stage a protest against its ongoing construction.
Naidu and about 75 other TDP leaders, including legislators and party workers, were arrested at Dharmabad on the AP-Maharashtra border. According to sources, the delegation was stopped on the border by the Maharashtra police and asked to board a police bus. The bus was taken to an ITI campus at Dharmabad.
“We wanted to let the world know about the illegal activities Maharashtra is carrying out in the form of various irrigation projects. The Telangana region in AP will go dry if these projects are allowed to come up,” Naidu said before his arrest.
Politicians across party lines in AP are opposed to the Babhli dam that promises to bring 8,000 hectares of land in the Nanded district under irrigation. The ruling Congress and the opposition TDP in AP have accused the Maharashtra government of violating the Supreme Court order.
Chavan has been maintaining that there has been no such violation. “We will not allow any unrest in Maharashtra because of conflicts between states,” he said.
With Maharashtra and AP under Congress rule, the prime minister will need to do a deft balancing act. “The Centre is likely to retain status quo as it cannot antagonise either Maharashtra or AP where it has governments,” a senior officer in the state water resources development department said.
“The decision to construct the Babhli dam was taken after the Godavari tribunal verdict favoured Maharashtra. We have not even laid claims to 12 TMC (thousand million cubic feet), which is our right. We are just talking of 2.75 TMC of water at the moment,” said an NCP leader.
The opposition, Shiv Sena and BJP, are behind Chavan on the issue. Sena leader Subash Desai said, “When we are pitted against quarreling neighbours we will have to learn to talk tough. We are claiming our share of water. Why should Andhra Pradesh object?”
BJP leader Madhav Bhandari admitted that “the BJP cannot align with TDP against Maharashtra. We can understand that Chandrababu Naidu is trying to take the centre stage through such agitations. But nobody can deny Maharashtra its right over the Godavari water.”
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