Banakacherla: the water project that has put two Telugu states back in court
Andhra Pradesh wants to move surplus Godavari water to Rayalaseema. Telangana says the project is unapproved, and has gone to the Supreme Court.
The Godavari–Banakacherla link — also called the Polavaram–Banakacherla project — is the most contested item in Andhra Pradesh’s development programme, and the only one whose main obstacle is another state.
The plan is to divert surplus Godavari water, drawn via the Polavaram headworks, across the Krishna basin to the Banakacherla regulator in Kurnool district. For Rayalaseema, chronically short of water and chronically last in line for it, the project is transformative. For Telangana, it is a diversion of water from a shared river conducted without agreement.
The legal position
The dispute is not principally about hydrology. It is about process.
Polavaram received environmental clearance in 2005. The Expert Appraisal Committee has since noted the need for fresh environmental scrutiny and Central Water Commission consultation, given submergence. A Stop Work Order was issued over unapproved changes in project scope — and has been repeatedly kept in abeyance, most recently extended to 2 July 2026, allowing work to continue while the underlying objection remains unresolved.
That pattern — an order issued, then suspended, then suspended again — is the mechanism by which the project has advanced without ever quite being approved.
Objections have come not only from Telangana but from Odisha and Chhattisgarh, both affected by Polavaram’s submergence upstream.
Telangana’s case
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy has said Telangana will approach the Supreme Court to stop the link, and the state has convened all-party meetings of its MPs to press the Centre. Its argument is that Andhra Pradesh is treating as “surplus” water that has not been adjudicated as surplus, and building the infrastructure to move it before the question is settled.
Andhra Pradesh’s ministers have responded that the link will not harm Telangana’s interests — an assurance rather than an adjudication.
The Union government has moved to constitute a high-level committee on the dispute and on wider Krishna–Godavari sharing questions.
Why it is hard
Inter-state river disputes in India are slow because the underlying data is contested. “Surplus” water depends on assessments of dependable yield that both states calculate differently, and tribunals take years to resolve what engineers cannot.
Meanwhile the physical works advance. That asymmetry — construction moving at project speed, adjudication at tribunal speed — is the recurring feature of Indian water conflicts, and it tends to favour whoever is building.
What to watch
The Supreme Court’s handling of Telangana’s petition, and whether the Stop Work Order is allowed to lapse again in July. A third extension would confirm that the abeyance mechanism has become the de facto approval.