Babhali barrage, located near Dharmabad in Nanded district and having a storage capacity of 2.7 TMC, has been at the centre of an inter-state dispute for nearly two decades
In a letter dated Oct 21 to Rajya Sabha member Ajeet Gopchade, the water resources department (WRD) said Telangana had not responded to multiple communications seeking discussions on modifying the operational restrictions imposed on the Babhali barrage in Nanded district .
The department said Maharashtra first wrote to Telangana on Oct 5, 2018, seeking consent to explore alternatives that would allow optimum storage at the barrage and requesting that the issue be taken up in the supervisory committee. Follow-up correspondence was sent at the secretary level in Sept and Oct 2020, but no response was received. The original suit was filed in 2006 during the Y S Rajasekhara Reddy-led Andhra Pradesh govt. Naidu was arrested during a protest visit to Dharmabad in 2010, triggering uproar in both Parliament and the Maharashtra assembly.
“Concurrently, regarding the legal aspects of the matter, vide govt letter dated Oct 20, 2025 and May 18, 2026, the Godavari Marathwada Irrigation Development Corporation (GMIDC) has been directed to obtain the opinion of the corporation’s legal adviser regarding the filing of a review petition against the SC’s final judgment and to submit a detailed proposal to govt to that effect,” Vaishali Nerkar, WRD joint secretary, stated in her letter to Gopchade. Rajya Sabha member Gopchade said these conditions prevented Maharashtra from creating optimum storage even in years of heavy rainfall when the downstream Pochampad dam was already overflowing. To protect the region’s water rights, swift legal intervention is necessary,” he said. The push for a review comes after the WRD, in a May 18 communication, pulled up GMIDC for submitting an “extremely brief and vague” proposal on the legal review route.
The letter further stated that the Maharashtra chief minister and water resources minister had repeatedly sought a joint meeting with their Telangana counterparts to resolve the issue through mediation, but these efforts also elicited no response. “The existing conditions are affecting water availability in drought-prone Marathwada. The department directed the corporation to prepare a comprehensive case backed by detailed legal grounds and supporting documents for scrutiny by the law and judiciary department. The politically sensitive Babhali dispute has witnessed sharp confrontations in the past. The issue later gained momentum under TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, who accused Maharashtra of threatening irrigation and drinking water supplies in Telangana.