The Narendra Modi government at the Centre shocked Andhra Pradesh and Telangana government by issuing a ‘midnight gazette notification’ taking control of all the irrigation projects on Krishna and Godavari rivers.

The union jal shakti ministry issued a gazette notification after 12 midnight on Thursday.

The notification will come into effect from October 14.

AP and TS are engaged in a bitter war over sharing of Krishna water for the last 20 days. The TS is taking up hydel power generation at Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar, Pulichintala projects which AP is strongly opposing.

Both the States lodged complaints against each other with the Centre.

AP CM YS Jagan wrote letters to PM Modi twice against TS.

Against this backdrop, the Centre issued notification taking control of all the projects.

While the water row was on Krishna river, the Centre took control of all projects on Krishna and Godavari. The Centre will deploy CRPF forces on these projects.

The Centre brought all Krishna projects under the jurisdiction of Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) and Godavari projects under Godavari River Management Board (GRMB).

Now AP and TS governments have to seek permission of Centre and these boards to construct any new projects or generate hydel power.

For ongoing projects on these rivers without any approvals, both the state governments have to seek approvals within six months from the Centre by submitting all documents. If Centre rejects approvals for these ongoing projects, the States have to scrap these projects.

The AP government took up Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation Scheme on Krishna without any approvals while TS government took up several projects such as Palamur Rangareddy, Dindi etc without any approvals. Now the fate of these projects lie in the hands of Centre.

The Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday appointed Telangana Superintendent of Prisons D. Dasaradha Rami Reddy as an officer on special duty (OSD) to advisor Sajjala Rama Krishna Reddy, on deputation basis.

“Government hereby appoints D. Dasaradha Rami Reddy as OSD to the Advisor to government (Public Affairs), government of AP in the existing sanctioned vacancy,” Andhra’s Principal Secretary, Political, Mutyala Raju Revu, said.

The inter-state deputation will be for an initial period of two years on usual conditions of deputation, he said.

“The Home Department, Government of Telangana, Hyderabad is therefore requested to relieve Rami Reddy with immediate effect and furnish the LPC and service register of the above individual to the General Administration Department, Andhra Pradesh Secretariat,” added Revu.

Rami Reddy also requested the Telangana government to post him as an OSD on deputation basis.

One thing that kept Andhra Pradesh Government perturbed on the Krishna water dispute was how Telangana had the advance information of all the moves of AP. Whatever the AP irrigation department was planning on the Krishna dispute was already known to the Telangana government and the latter was always found to be one step ahead.

At the same time the AP could not get any information about Telangana government’s plans and preparations. The Telangana was checkmating AP at every step on the Krishna river water. All the letters and the contents of the AP government’s communications to the Centre are reportedly being known to Telangana irrigation officials even before they were dispatched.

Internal investigations reportedly showed that one of the top irrigation officials was leaking information to his counterpart in Telangana out of old friendship. The information was gleefully taken by the Telangana officials, who used to their full advantage. Sources said the government has come to know about this and is reported to have taken a serious view of it. It is planning to initiate action against the said official.

Both the Telugu states are embroiled in a dispute over the sharing of Krishna river water. While Telangana is objecting to the construction of the Rayalaseema Lift Irrigation Project near Srisailm, the AP Government has questioned the Telangana government over taking up Alampur project and six other projects on Krishna river upstream of Srisailam project. AP also objected to the power generation from Nagarjunasagar project against the agreed norms. Both have now approached the Krishna River Management Board.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy made a statement from the dais that was set up for his swearing-in-ceremony as CM on May 30, 2019 that his government will release annual job recruitment calendar every year to fill vacancies in government departments every year.

However, Jagan failed to deliver on his promise till recently.

It took more than than two years for Jagan to release first annual job recruitment calendar.

Recently on June 28, Jagan released the annual job calendar but it faced the wrath of unemployed youth and government job seekers in Telangana as the calendar notified just 10,143 vacancies to be filled in the next nine months until March 2022.

While the vacancies in government departments in AP are in lakhs somewhere around over 2 lakh or so, Jagan notified just 10,143 vacancies that too after two years triggering anger among from student unions and opposition parties.

Now, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Tuesday announced to release annual recruitment calendar in the cabinet meeting.

The TRS government failed to fill even 40,000 posts through TSPSC during the past seven years. Worse still is, not a single recruitment notification was released by any recruitment agency in Telangana for the last three years since 2018.

But TRS government derived political mileage in all the elections held since then with KCR issuing statements that the government will soon fill over 50,000 vacancies in all departments whenever there were any elections in Telangana.

That ‘soon’ never came even after KCR issued ‘jobs very soon’ statements during Dubbak Assembly bypoll, GHMC elections in 2020-end, Graduate MLC polls in March 2021, Nagarjunasagar Assembly bypoll in April 2021 and municipal polls in April 2021.

As the Huzurabad Assembly bypoll nears, opposition parties and unemployed youth believe that KCR is again trying to mislead students and youth to gain political mileage under the guise of annual job calendar.

It remains to be seen whether KCR succeeds in releasing annual job calendars every year where Jagan failed.

The Krishna water row between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana refuses to die down even after two weeks.

As this was not enough, a strange war has now erupted between AP and TS over darshan of Lord Venkateshwara in Tirupati.

Telangana political leaders accuse TTD of throwing their recommendation letters issued to pilgrims seeking VIP break darshans, accommodations etc into dustbins.

They alleged that TTD is ignoring their letters after Krishna water row between TS and AP.

They also alleged that AP CM YS Jaganmohan Reddy has issued orders to TTD not to honour letters issued by TS leaders like minister, MLAs, MLCs, MPs etc.

However TTD on Sunday strongly denied these allegations. TTD said TS leaders are issuing recommendation letters over and above their quota and only excess letters are ignored.

TTD said it is following all the norms with regard to Telangana leaders like earlier and requested all not to drag TTD into politics unnecessarily.