Union Minister for Tourism, Culture and Development of Northeast Region G. Kishan Reddy has demanded that the State government get the Centre’s Dam Safety Authority to probe into the “sinking” of the Medigadda barrage project pillars, under the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project, on Sunday.
Mr. Reddy, also the Telangana BJP president, told a press conference that the entire irrigation project was built with a lot of fanfare spending thousands of crores of taxpayers’ money but the latest “design flaw” post the recent sinking of Kannepallai and Annaram pump houses, has created a lot of doubts in the minds of the people.
“The government is not allowing anyone to go near the Medigadda project after reports of the “cave in” surfaced. Our MLA Eatala Rajender is already on the way to the site to check the damage but the government is yet to respond to the latest incident,” he said.
The Minister said he would also write to the ‘Jal Shakti Ministry’ to look into the project and other irrigation works to take steps to prevent any further loss as a lot of taxpayers’ money is involved.
“The Kaleshwaran project has been the dream work of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and he went ahead with it as a “super engineer” personally supervising the construction disregarding the doubts expressed by the retired engineers. But, the design flaws getting exposed repeatedly within three years of its official opening is a serious issue,” observed Mr. Reddy.
The BJP leader claimed that the ₹1.5 lakh crore Kaleshwararam project is a “huge burden” on Telangana because of the amount of money pumped into the project with limited benefits to the farmers. “Every year 400 TMC water was supposed to be lifted to irrigate but so far, 150 TMC has been lifted, with the rest of the water flowing by gravity during rains,” he added.
