KCR engineering benefits

​Hyderabad: In a strong counter to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s claims on the benefits of re-engineering irrigation projects, Congress party picked several loopholes in the unilateral execution of irrigation projects across Telangana under the TRS regime in the last two years.

Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy in his 150-minute presentation titled ‘Telangana Vastava Jala Drushyam’ on Wednesday exposed KCR’s re-engineering of the state’s irrigation policy.

The TPCC chief wondered why the government redesigned the Pranahitha – Chevella multi- purpose irrigation project by escalating the cost from Rs 38,000 crore to Rs 85,000 crore and rechristened it as Pranahitha – Kaleswar­am project.

The Centre has already notified the project as national project in the AP Reorganisation Act. But, the government deliberately put on hold the demand for national project status and finalised tenders to allegedly receive kickbacks from contractors.

Though the project cost was inflated by several folds, the increase in the ayacut after redesign was minimal, he said. “Under the Congress rule, it had aimed to create 16 lakh acre of ayacut. Now, the ayacut has been increased by an additional 2 lakh acre. The project has also got several clearances,” he said.

He brought to light the deficiencies in the re-designing of Kaleswaram project. To protect 3,000 acres of submerged area in Maharashtra, the TS government compromised on utilisation of its share of water from River Godavari. And, in Telangana, the government is acquiring one lakh acre for the project, leading to the displacement of several families.

Reddy lashed out at KCR for not completing pending projects taken up by the previous Congress government. It required only Rs 8,971 crore to complete all the pending works, which would have created nearly 30 lakh new ayacut by utilising 283 tmc ft of water.

Referring to the Palamuru- Ranga Reddy lift irrigation project, the TPCC president pointed out to the project cost, which has been increased to Rs 50,985 crore from Rs 35,200 crore in three months, on the pretext of re-designing the project. “There is no clarity on the creation of new ayacut in the district after re-designing the project,” he said.

The PCC chief discounted KCR’s claim that the TRS government would create one crore new ayacut by re-engineering the irrigation projects in Telangana. The total ayacut already created in Telangana was 98.47 lakh acre and the remaining ayacut that needs to be created is 12.53 lakh acre.

About 51.47 lakh acre of new ayacut was created between 2004 and 2014 under the Congress rule. “To bring 12 lakh acre under the new ayacut, the present government is spending Rs 1.5 lakh crore,” he alleged. Claiming that most of the projects were built during the Congress regime in Telangana, the TPCC leader said foodgrain production has come down drastically after TRS came to power.

The production is down to 49.35 lakh metric tonnes in 2015-16 from 72 lakh tonnes (2014-15). In 2013-14, the total foodgrain production in Telangana was 107.49 lakh tonnes. The Congress also strongly objected to the introduction of ‘green channel’ system for the release of funds to contractors directly.

After the presentation, Uttam demanded the Telangana government to come for an open debate on re-designing of the projects, make public all project DPRs and order a probe into the alleged corruption in irrigation schemes.

Congress leader D Sravan listed out the pending projects, including Kalwakurthi, Bheema, Nettempadu, Sripada Yellampalli, Devadula, Indiramma flood flow canal and shelving of Kantanapalli and Narayanpet- Kodangal projects and re-designing of the Indira Dummugudem and Rajiv Dummugudem Sagar and Dindi lift irrigation works.

AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, AICC (SC Cell Chairman) K Raju, party senior leaders - S Jaipal Reddy, Ponnala Laxmaiah, K R Suresh Reddy, Mohd Ali Shabbir, Damodara Raja Narasimha, P Sabitha Indra Reddy, D K Aruna and others were present at the well-attended presentation.