The row over Almatti marks the most serious challenge to the fledgling Gowda Government. Almatti is the main component of the Rs 1,500-crore Upper Krishna Project. Andhra objects to Karnataka's 1993 decision to increase the dam's height by 40 feet from 1,680 ft, saying it'll allow Karnataka to utilise about 400 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet of water against the 178 TMC ft allocated to it by the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal.
Andhra also feels that the Centre's decision to allocate Rs 200 crore from the Accelerated Irrigation Scheme after Gowda came to power smacks of partisanship. The reports were later denied. Karnataka's Major Irrigation Minister K.N. Nage Gowda contends the dam's additional storage created by the heighthike will not encroach into Andhra's share (800 TMC ft). And the state's former chief engineer A.V. Shankar Rao says the original height of the dam was 1,720 ft anyway.
Moreover, the Central Water Commission has upheld Karnataka's demand to increase the dam's height and the Tribunal hasn't imposed height restrictions on dams anywhere else on the Krishna. With both the Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam dams having carry-over capacity, Karnataka says Andhra Pradesh should not lose any sleep.
But Andhra Pradesh's Major Irrigation Minister K.S.P. Rao says the height-hike will seriously impact the 33 lakh acres under the Srisailam reservoir. If Karnataka gets to impound 400 TMC ft of water, all the reservoirs in the downstream Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Krishna Barrage—will go dry. "No amount of assurance will convince us to the contrary," declared K.S.P. Rao, ominously.
The simmering controversy boiled over after Congress leader P. Janardhan Reddy took a press party to the dam site to show the "clandestine" work by Karnataka. Reports of the infusion of money, later denied, only added to the ire. K.S.P. Rao called Deve Gowda " charitraheen " (characterless), Naidu dashed off a strongly-worded letter to the PM, threatened to resign as convenor of the United Front's steering committee. Rattled, Gowda had no option but to convene a meeting of the CMs of the aggrieved states. But to little avail.
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