hyderabad
The Congress Government in Telangana appears to have swung into action without wasting much time to probe into the alleged irregularities in the execution of irrigation projects, particularly the much talked about Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP), by the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Government with Vigilance and Enforcement (V&E) wing teams conducting searches of Irrigation Department offices across the State.
Several teams of the V&E Department were sent to the field from Tuesday morning to conduct searches in the Irrigation Department offices including the offices of Engineers-in-Chief (ENCs) in Hyderabad, Ramagundam, Gajwel and Karimnagar. Searches were also on at field-level offices such as Chief, Superintending and Executive Engineer involved in the execution of projects.
According to highly-placed sources, the teams were seizing files, documents and hard disks of computers so that they could not be tampered with. The focus of searches is to find irregularities both in the technical (engineering) and financial aspects. The documents of project works from pre-bid stage are being taken for investigation.
The V&E authorities were planning to take the assistance of experts from the JNTU-H in the matter of engineering aspects and chartered accountants in the case of financial aspects. It is understood that the State Government has directed the V&E Department to go into the irregularities before instituting a judicial probe following the Irrigation Department authorities’ alleged reluctance to share the details even at the review meetings conducted at Ministers level.
Sensing the possibility of tampering with documents/records by at least some of the irrigation engineers/officials to cover the mistakes, if any, committed by them during the execution of projects, the V&E inquiry has been instituted first, the sources stated.
The Congress party has been alleging large-scale irregularities and corruption in the execution of irrigation projects, particularly KLIP, from the beginning and Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy made an announcement about instituting a judicial probe into the irregularities during the first session of the Legislature last month. He announced in the Legislative Council and it was reiterated later by Deputy Chief Minister M. Bhatti Vikramarka and Minister for Irrigation N. Uttam Kumar Reddy.
