Published Feb 17, 2024 | 9:09 PM ⚊ Updated Feb 18, 2024 | 9:45 AM
The sunken piers of Kaleshwaram. (UttamINC/X)
While his supporters celebrated his birthday outside, KCR faced an onslaught by Congress inside the Telangana assembly on Saturday. The onslaught of allegations came from a white paper on Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme that Congress presented in the House, as if giving KCR an unpleasant birthday gift.
Tempers ran expectedly high when the Telangana Assembly took up the White Paper on the Irrigation Sector for discussion on Saturday, 17 February. With the Congress blaming the previous BRS government for turning the multi-stage Kaleshwaram Project into a white elephant, Opposition BRS accused the current dispensation of mud-slinging.
As soon as the House assembled, Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy explained the purpose of the White Paper. BRS leader and former minister T Harish Rao described the document as a tissue of white lies. That set the tone for the day.
Harish Rao defended his government’s decision to redesign the Pranahita Chevella Sujala Sravanthi (PCSS) as the Kaleshwaram Project.
Harish Rao, taking exception to the criticism, said the Chief Minister was trying to provoke him to make him lose focus on nailing the state government’s lies. “We have constructed the components of the Kaleshwaram Project on the suggestions of the Central Water Commission. As Maharashtra disagreed with the Pranahita Chevella project, we had to relocate the barrage to Medigadda,” he said.
“Also, it was unfair for Congress to describe the Medigadda fiasco as the greatest of all disasters. Even when the Congress was in power in undivided Andhra Pradesh, several such incidents happened,” Harish Rao sought to defend KCR.
He cited the bursting of the pipes of the Devadula Lift Irrigation Scheme in the erstwhile Warangal district as an example. “I am not saying that the piers of Medigaddda have not sunk. You are in power now. Take action against those who are responsible. But get down to restoring the barrage and help the farmers,” Harish Rao said.
Chief Minister Revanth Reddy intervened, saying that the BRS did so because it had the ulterior motive of inflating the estimates.
“The idea of redesigning took birth in KCR’s brain after the formation of Telangana state in 2014. For this, the then BRS government had redesigned the PCSS, shifted the proposed barrage at Thummidi-Hatti in Adilabad district on Pranahita, a tributary of Godavari, to Medigadda by inflating the estimates, though unwarranted,” he said.
He alleged that Harish Rao and his uncle and former chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao had plundered the public money by redesigning PCSS, which was meant to benefit large tracts of parched lands from Adilabad to Ranga Reddy.
“Both the uncle and his nephew had turned the state into one infested by vermin,” he said.
He produced a document that claimed a group of five engineers had advised KCR against going ahead with the KLIS. The chief minister said that the 14-page report by the engineers, whom KCR had hand-picked, had preferred PCSS to KLIS.
“They argued that PCSS was viable, but by then, KCR had already decided to relocate the barrage to Medigadda,” Revanth Reddy said.
The chief minister said that the Medigadda barrage now stands as an “eloquent symbol of the greed of a few and a millstone around the neck of the people of Telangana”. Turning to Maheswaram BRS MLA Sabitha Indra Reddy, Revanth Reddy recalled that when in Congress she took part in a protest against the projects’s redesigning.
“And she is now in the same camp that had done injustice to her district and constituency,” he said. Revanth Reddy advised Harish Rao to introspect why KCR had dropped him as Irrigation Minister in his second innings. Stating he would set up an inquiry panel soon, he asked Rao to admit his mistakes before it.
Revanth Reddy said that Maharashtra, too, would have agreed had the government reduced the height of the barrage at Thummidi-Hatti from the proposed height of 152 metres to 150 metres as the area of submergence in the neighbouring state would then have come down to 1,250 acres from 1,850 acres. However, KCR wanted the barrage at Medigadda and pump water from two more reservoirs at Annaram and Sundilla before taking it to reservoirs in his district.
The Chief Minister said that the engineers’ committee also recommended that it was not desirable to lift 160 tmcft of water from Medigadda to Mid-Manair and from there to the erstwhile Medak district.
“Instead, they felt that the CPSS was better as its cost was ₹ 35,000 crore, but KCR had inflated it so much that it has now reached a staggering ₹ 1.47 lakh crore. Even though the piers of Medigadda sank, and the durability of the two other barrages – Annaram and Sundilla – came under a cloud, the BRS leaders, instead of hanging their heads in shame, were trying to defend themselves,” he said.
The chief minister said it was unfortunate that the BRS was trying to defend itself brazenly and disputing everyone trying to explain the truth.
“You have no faith in the vigilance department of the state government, nor the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA), nor even the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). All of them were either government and statutory institutions, and they had indicted the erstwhile BRS government on the construction of the Kaleshwaram Project,” he said.
Presenting the White Paper in the morning, Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy said the previous government had taken up Kaleshwaram to provide irrigation to 19 lakh acres, but the piers of the Medigadda barrage, the heart of the entire project, had collapsed, adding that since last night, even Annaram was also leaking.
“When we informed the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA), they asked us to empty the barrage immediately. They will be arriving in two days to take a close look at the project,” he said, expressing concern that a project which should last more than 100 years had collapsed within three years of its commissioning.
He said that at the time of the construction of Medigadda, the work order was for ₹1,800 crore, but it was inflated to ₹ 4,500 crore later on, which only explains the extent of corruption that had taken place.
“In no state in India did corruption take place on such a large scale,” he said. Though the piers sank on 21 October last year, KCR did not say a word about it, he said, reiterating that the government would initiate stringent action against those responsible for the collapse of the piers. “We will base our action on the findings of the vigilance and enforcement department, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA),” he said.
Quoting from the CAG report, he said it was shocking to know that if all the motors of the KLIS worked simultaneously, the energy demand would go up to 203 million units per day, which is more than 196 million units, the average daily demand of the entire state. He said the power bills for KLIS would be about ₹10,374 crore per year, which is another shocker.
He pointed out that the project’s benefit-cost ratio was inflated. But the fact of the matter is that even at ₹81,911 crore understated investment, the BC ratio works out to 1:0.75. If ₹1.47 lakh crore investment is taken into account, it will come down to 1:0.52, which proves that the project, ab initio, was economically unviable.
The minister said that the department had not carried out the work of construction of the Medigadda barrage in the specified sequential manner. The vigilance and enforcement department had found that the raft and secant piles were not laid sequentially in Block-7, where the piers had sunk. The NDSA, after examining the project, said that damage to the piers had occurred due to a combination of issues involving planning, design, quality control, and operation and maintenance (O&M).
The irrigation minister said that till 2014, 57 lakh acres were brought under irrigation by spending ₹54,234 crore and the cost per acre was only ₹93,000. But, after the BRS took over in 2014 and to date, the total expenditure was ₹1.81 lakh crore, and the new ayacut created was only 15.81 lakh acres, which works out to an expenditure of ₹11.45 lakh per acre.
Telangana government has decided to take the opinion and assistance of the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) for restoring Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages. All three are part of the multi- stage Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS).
Wrapping up the discussion on white paper on irrigation sector in Telangana Assembly, Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy said that in their present form, the three barrages, particularly Medigadda, were not fit for use and that the government would wait for the NDSA to make a study of the three barrages and gives its advice.
“We will entrust the work to the NDSA on a war footing,” he said, adding: “We will not abandon Kaleshwaram or any project which the previous government had conceived and implemented. If there are any problems, we will take necessary steps to make them operational,” he said.
The government also felt that that inflating estimates of the projects by changing their designs had done a lot of harm to the interests of the state, “The state would not resort to this line of approach, going by the experience of Kaleshwaram Project,” he said.
The minister said that the government felt that construction of Kaleshwaram Project was a wrong decision. The government disapproved of the stand of the BRS in dismissing as baseless the findings of the CAG on Kaleshwaram, which is a credible central institution.
The minister pointed that the irrigation department proposed to accord top priority to the completion of ongoing projects with less gestation period and create a new ayacut of seven lakh acres in this financial year.
As regards the share of Telangana in Krishna waters, he said that the state would not, under any circumstances, compromise on its interests. The state would argue before the KWDT Tribunal -II for 68 percent share of the 811 tmcft Krishna water allocated to both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
“Telangana is eligible for 68 percent since the river’s catchment area in Telangana area is that much,” he said. He also made it clear that the state would not hand over the projects on Krishna river to the KRMB, come what may.
The minister said that the centre had consented for swapping of high cost loans that the state had borrowed for irrigation projects with low cost ones. “Union Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman had consented to our request when we met her recently and represented Telangana’s case,” he said.
He also said that Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat had promised to fund 60 percent of the cost of Palamuru Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme (PRLIS) under central schemes, allot 45 tmcft water for its first phase and another 45 tmcft for its second phase.
