Minister for Irrigation N. Uttam Kumar Reddy meeting the NDSA officials in New Delhi to discuss the safety measures to be taken for saving the Medigadda and other barrages of the Kaleshwaram project.
Minister for Irrigation N Uttam Kumar Reddy ridiculed Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president K. T. Rama Rao for continuing to mislead people on the Kaleshwaram project despite piers at Medigadda Barrage sinking raising questions about its utility.
“We don’t need the advice of KTR and his party, which is responsible for the collapse of the barrage after spending thousands of crores. The project was not only built, but also collapsed during the BRS regime and they don’t have the moral authority to even talk about it,” he said.
The Minister was addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Saturday. The Minister attended a meeting called by National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) Chairman Anil Jain to discuss the progress of the repairs of the Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla barrages.
The officials decided to meet again on Monday to finalise the steps to be taken to ensure the stability of the barrages and the government will go ahead with the repairs based on the advice of the NDSA.
Kaleshwaram a burden on Telangana
Mr. Reddy said BRS president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao used the project to project himself as an engineer par excellence and ignored the advice of the experts thus leaving the project as a burden on the State for generations to come.
He explained that government is forced to spend ₹10,000 crore per year on electricity charges for running the pumps and another ₹10,000 crore per year has to be paid as interest on the loan. The Minister said barrages are not used for storage unlike dams but KCR chose to store the water to fool Telangana people and use it for political campaign.
Mr. Reddy revealed that Congress government would build the project near Tummidihatti as planned initially to bring water through gravity. He said Kaleshwaram repair works would have to be done by the same contractor who constructed the project and the government was not spending money for the repairs.
