Round-table meet demands transfer back of 5 villages from A.P. to Telangana

A round-table meet organised by the Telangana Jagruthi on the impact of submergence in Telangana due to Andhra Pradesh’s Polavaram project has demanded that the Centre transfer back at least five villages which were transferred from Telangana to AP as part of seven mandals within a month after the bifurcation of the combined State in 2014.

At a meeting at the Press Club in Hyderabad on Friday, Telangana Jagruthi president and BRS MLC K. Kavitha suggested taking up the issue for discussion at a meeting scheduled with the Chief Ministers of AP, Telangana, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, on June 25 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

She asked Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy to build pressure on the Centre to get back five villages — Purushottapatnam, Gundala, Yetapaka, Kannayigudem and Pichukalapaka — by using his good offices with AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. She expressed concern over the permanent submergence threat to the temple town of Bhadrachalam with the Polavaram project. She sought to take up a joint survey on the submergence impact on Telangana immediately as it was being delayed wilfully by AP, despite repeated requests from Telangana.

Ms. Kavitha alleged that Mr. Naidu had snatched the seven mandals with backdoor politics and even the Lower Sileru hydel project, which was in Khammam district then, was also transferred to AP illegally. The threat of submergence with the Polavaram backwater had increased further after AP had enhanced the project’s spillway discharge capacity to 50 lakh cusecs.