Polavaram a mirage under Jagan rule, says TDP Parchuru MLA Yeluru Sambasiva Rao

Amaravati: With a severe fund crunch, the future of Polavaram project remains uncertain and the committed timeline of June 2021 looks unrealistic, said TDP Parchuru MLA Yeluru Sambasiva Rao, on the occasion of completion of 2 years governance of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.

After assuming power in May 2019, Jagan Reddy announced that the project would be completed by June 2021 and ordered for re-tendering of the project claiming irregularities in the allocation.

Sambasiva Rao said in the last 18 months YSRCP tenure, only 0.63 per cent of works have been completed. Despite the dearth of evidence suggesting irregularities in the project, the government took up re-tendering and terminated the contract with Navayuga Engineering Company Limited and signed a contract with another firm which quoted 12.6 per cent less than the previous contractor.

The YSRCP government and Jagan Mohan Reddy government are only focussed on blaming the previous TDP regime even after two years of coming to power in the state to cover their government's inefficiency in completion of the project, he said.

The budgetary allocations of the YSRCP too reflect the same. He said in 2019-20, the government allocated Rs 5,254 crore and in 2020-21 it allocated Rs 4,804 crore for the project. Of these budgetary allocations, in 2019-20, Rs 1,200 crore was set aside for R&R and in 2020-21 again Rs 1,200 crore was earmarked for R&R measures. However, only a paltry figure of 600 crores for R&R was released by the government in May 2020.

Thus, providing adequate relief only to 25% of the amount earmarked and leaving most of the remaining R&R households untouched.

The Union government's latest decision of withdrawing financial support to Polavaram project is another example of how the people of Andhra Pradesh are being made to suffer because of the present government's spending habits, Sambasiva Rao said.