Krishna river waters divide people of AP into camps

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and farmer groups from coastal Andhra Pradesh on Saturday launched an agitation to demand release of water from Nagarjunasagar dam to Krishna delta.

TDP legislators and party workers, along with farmers from the coastal districts of Prakasam, Guntur, Krishna and West Godavari, blocked highways and staged sit-ins to press for their demand.

In another development, Congress MP from Nandyal, S P Y Reddy, who had resigned from the Lok Sabha in protest against the release of water from Srisailam to the Nagarjunsagar dam to facilitate the farmers of the Krishna delta region, took back his resignation after a meeting with Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy on Saturday. “The CM agreed to release water for Rayalaseema,” he told reporters. Reddy had sent the resignation letter through his assistant to the Lok Sabha Speaker’s  office on Friday.

With farmers in the Krishna delta region (comprising Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam and West Godavari districts) supporting the TDP and the CPI’s demand, the state government on Friday morning released 21,000 cusecs from the Srisailam reservoir into Nagarjunsagar. 

Meanwhile, Nalgonda Congress MP Gutha Sukhender Reddy and four others from the Telangana region on Friday filed two separate petitions in the High Court, seeking direction to the state government to stop releasing water from the Nagarjunasagar reservoir, even if the water level at the reservoir was above 510 feet.