After a gap of nearly three months, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy are going to meet again on September 24 in Hyderabad, to take forward the Godavari river water issue.
The last time that KCR and Jagan had met was on June 28 to discuss the possibility of constructing a common lift irrigation project to divert Godavari waters into Krishna basin, so that it would benefit both the northern Telangana and Rayalaseema.
Their meeting was followed by a couple of rounds of discussions between the irrigation department officials of both the states, but they did not come to any conclusion on the location of the project and the entire scheme. Subsequently, there was no follow up on the issue.
Now, KCR is understood to have taken the initiative to revive the proposal and restart the negotiations.
As per the original understanding, KCR should go Amaravati to have discussions with Jagan, but it is now changed.
The Andhra CM himself will be coming to Hyderabad on September 24 to take part in the discussions at Pragati Bhavan and the Irrigations authorities from both states will participate.
Despite the initiatives being taken by the chief ministers, the contentious issues still remain between the two states on water sharing isseus.
On Thursday, when the top officials of the irrigation departments of the two states had a meeting with the Chairman of the Krishna board RK Gupta, both the states clashed with each other.
Andhra Pradesh argued that it had the whole right over the surplus waters of Krishna river and there is no need to take into account of the usage of floodwater from Krishna while deciding the quotas of the two states.
However, Telangana engineering chief argued that the Telangana state also deserved a quota in the flood waters.
The Telangana government order the Committee of Joint Engineers to calculate the amount of water transferred to from the Potireddipadu Head Regulatory. The issue is still unsettled.