The ruling YSRCP was hoping to showcase it as a major achievement and reap gains in the 2024 Assembly elections.
The first foundation stone laying happened all the way back in 1980. (Wikimedia Commons)
Water from the Polavaram project will not reach farmers before 2025, though several kharif seasons have passed ever since the YSRCP came to power in Andhra Pradesh.
A few months after taking charge as the chief minister in May 2019, a confident YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had given assurances in the state Assembly that the Polavaram multipurpose project would be completed by 2021, in time for the kharif season that year.
The YSRCP government kept pushing back the deadline — from 2021 to 2022 and 2023. It hoped to complete the project ahead of the 2024 elections to showcase it as a major achievement and reap electoral gains.
However, Jagan has once again extended the deadline. During his recent visit to the flood victims in Konaseema, he set a 2025 deadline and blamed the previous TDP government for the delay.
Former chief minister T Anjaiah laid the foundation stone for the project in 1980. When the Congress government under Jagan’s father YS Rajasekhar Reddy came to power in 2005, he revived the plan.
Ever since then, the project has been stumbling on hurdles, including cost overruns, changes in contractors and governments, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Damage caused to the main dam’s diaphragm wall and the cofferdam during the flash floods of 2020 compounded the woes.
“I have lost hope that I will see the completion of the Polavaram project in my lifetime,” Vundavalli Arun Kumar, former Congress MP from Rajamahendravaram, said without hiding his disappointment.
Arun Kumar, a strong advocate of the project, blamed successive governments after the demise of Rajasekhar Reddy in 2009 for the delay. He said negligence had been delaying the completion of the project.
Incidentally, the project has seen a dozen chief ministers, including Jagan, ever since Anjaiah kickstarted its works more than four decades ago.
The Polavaram Irrigation Project (PIP) is on the river Godavari near Ramayyapeta village of Polavaram Mandal, about 34 km upstream from the Kovvur-Rajamahendravaram road-cum-rail bridge and 42 km upstream from the Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage, where the river emerges out of the last range of the Eastern Ghats and enters the plains of the West Godavari district.
The major multipurpose irrigation project was intended to have a gross irrigation potential of 4,36,825 hectares.
The project also envisaged the generation of 960MW of hydropower, drinking water supply to 28.50 lakh people in 611 villages, and diversion of 80 tmcft of water to the Krishna river basin.
Section 90 of the Andhra Pradesh State Reorganisation Act of 2014 declared the Polavaram Irrigation Project a national project. In pursuance of the Act, the Union government constituted a governing body in the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) to monitor the works.
Since 2005, the project has witnessed cost-escalations multiple times. The project proposal was considered and accepted by the advisory committee of the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) in 2009 for ₹10,151.04 crore at the 2005-06 price level.
Subsequently, the project was accorded investment clearance by the Planning Commission for ₹10,151.04 crore.
However, the project’s estimated cost was revised to ₹16,010.45 crore at 2010-11 price level. In 2019, the project cost was again revised to ₹55,548.87 crore at the 2017-18 price level. The advisory committee accepted both revisions.
In August 2020, the river Godavari witnessed massive floods. The half-built upper cofferdam was washed away, damaging the diaphragm wall in two places.
While the cofferdam was meant to divert water during the construction of the reservoir, the diaphragm wall was constructed on the riverbed to block the water and arrest seepage via a foundation, on which the main earth-cum-rock-fill (ECRF) dam — 48 metres high and 1.75 km long — was to be constructed.
“Damage to the cofferdam and the diaphragm wall exposed the lack of seriousness of the previous government. It shows how the Polavaram project was poorly handled during the TDP regime, as the diaphragm wall was built before the completion of the cofferdam, which resulted in damage due to floods. Now, everything is delayed,” Jagan blamed the TDP at a meeting in Konaseema.
Immediately after the YSRCP came to power, Jagan cancelled the contract with Navayuga Engineering and went for reverse tendering.
In the reverse tendering, Megha Engineering Infrastructures Ltd (MEIL) bagged the Polavaram Project’s headworks, earth-cum-rock fill dam, and hydropower station.
MEIL bid for the project with 12.6 percent less compared to the government’s base price of ₹4,358 crore.
Meanwhile, TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu blamed Jagan for the project’s delay. “Jagan, with his incompetence and inefficiency, has made the Polavaram project as good as defunct,” he said during a recent visit to the project site.
He added that the Polavaram Project Authority found fault with the reverse tendering decision and raised strong objections.
“On 13 August, 2019, the PPA said that the then contractor was functioning well and there was no need for replacing the firm. The PPA also pointed out how the head-works have come to a standstill due to the replacement of the contractor,” the former chief minister said.
“As Jagan did not heed the PPA advice and went ahead with his stupidity, this situation has now arisen,” said Naidu.
He added that while the TDP government took decisions with a vision, the current chief minister was moving ahead with inefficiency.
Attempts were being made to complete the balance works on a priority basis to store water at 41.5 metres.
Jagan has requested the Union government to release funds to finish the works and also to pay the rehabilitation and resettlement package to the project evacuees.
“The Department of Expenditure under the Ministry of Finance has communicated no objection to additional funding for completing the balance work of Polavaram Irrigation Project (PIP) for filling water up to 41.15 metres, amounting to ₹10,911.15 crore,” Union Minister of State for Water Resources Bishweswar Tudu told the Rajya Sabha recently.
He also said that allotting ₹2,000 crore for repairing damages caused by floods was being considered by the government.
Tudu added that the Andhra Pradesh government has submitted a revised cost estimate for ₹17,144.06 crore for the balance works.
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