Bengaluru: A large part of Karnataka is facing conditions of severe drought and shortage of water. The government of Karnataka has declared more than 3,000 regions to be highly affected by a drinking water shortage. The Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj has said that 138 out of 176 taluks in the state have a low groundwater level. The Bagepalli, Chikkaballapura, Sidlaghatta, Bangarpet and Kolar taluks are among the worst affected.
Amidst this, water resource minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday, as per a report by ANI, alleged that in spite of the agreement between the two states, Maharashtra is refusing to release water into the Krishna river.
“We approached the Maharashtra government to release water as they had previously agreed to do so upon our request. Now they are not willing to release water into the Krishna river,” ANI quoted DKShi.
He then added that the state government would release one thousand million cubics (TMC) of water to ease the people’s crisis.
“We will release the last one TMC live storage for the benefit of the farmers and the people of Kagwad and Athani,” the minister said.
In December last year, the state government declared 156 out of 176 taluks as drought-hit due to poor Monsoon.
