Polavaram now a national project

Hyderabad: The Centre will execute the multi-purpose Polavaram irrigation project, which will benefit farmers of the Godavari and Krishna deltas. Besides declaring it as a national project, the responsibility for executing it will be taken up by the Centre, said Union home minister Sushil kumar Shinde.

Sources told this newspaper that it was former bureaucrat K. Raju, who recently joined the Congress and has been working closely with the Gandhi family on several initiatives in the National Development Council, who convinced Congress president Sonia Gandhi of the need for the Centre to implement the Polavaram project. He is said to have explained that the move would not only ensure speedy implementation but resolve the row over transferring Bhadrachalam division to the residuary state.

“It is easy to implement the Centre’s decision on the new capital because it is again the Congress government that will be ruling till the 2014 polls in the residuary state and it will implement the Centre’s decision,” said a former bureaucrat. At the time of the merger of Telangana also, the Centre had decided on Hyderabad as the capital, he added.

Politicians from Rayalaseema have been making an emotional appeal to locate the capital in Kurnool, which was once the capital of Andhra state. But Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada-Guntur and Ongole are also strong contenders.