Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has decided to lift water from the Srisailam dam to Nalgonda district, precluding the nearest water source Nagarjunasagar dam, featuring in earlier project design, for his pet Telangana water grid scheme.
With this, the ambitious project, touted as world’s longest water grid of 1.26 lakh kilometres, meant to provide safe drinking water in the state, has landed itself in controversy and is mired in graft allegations.
Frequent changes in project design in the last one month has fuelled allegations that it is being done at the behest of some private pipe manufacturing companies.
The project expenditure is expected to increase manifold as a result, with more pipes to be laid and more lands acquired.
The government has decided to spend Rs 25, 000 crore on the project and pipe manufacturing firms are keen on making moolah out of it.
Mr Rao himself is monitoring the entire scheme right from the start and neither his Cabinet colleagues nor officials in the panchayat raj department have dared to comment on this issue, let alone bring to his notice, the implications of “hasty decisions.”
The government had earlier directed Nalgonda officials to design the project as three grids.
Mr Rao changed the design of first grid (AKBR), wherein water is to be drawn not from Akkampalli balancing reservoir, but from Srisailam project.
While officials were in the process of changing the design, Mr Rao made further changes last week, asking them to do away with three grids and design a single grid for which water should be drawn only from Srisailam dam.
The government has also imposed a condition that the companies which want to supply pipes to the project should have manufacturing facilities in the state for it would generate employment opportunities for local youths.
As a result, companies from other states shied away, as setting up facilities here just for the sake of this project would be financially unviable in the future.
This leaves a mega infrastructure firm, which played a crucial role in Jalayagnam projects in the undivided state and faced graft allegations, as the only choice, fuelling allegations against the TS government
Though officials remained tight-lipped on the issue, they cited change in project design as CM’s efforts to utilise Telangana’s share of water in Srisailam to the optimum level.
But, sources say there are several other ways to utilise Srisailam water than changing project design, which is very costly.
