Hyderabad, June 18 -- A civic body has written to Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy urging him to redirect the Rs 1,000 crore sanctioned for the upcoming Pushkaralu festival towards cleaning up the Godavari river, warning that decades of unchecked industrial pollution have left the state's primary drinking water source severely degraded.

In a letter dated Thursday, June 18, Forum for Good Governance (FGG) president M Padmanabha Reddy said the Godavari, which supplies most of Hyderabad's drinking water, had become one of the most polluted rivers in India over the past three decades.

The letter catalogued pollution sources along the river's course through Telangana. Industrial effluents from Maharashtra enter at Kandakurthi near Ba...