BRS Lets KLIS Inauguration Anniversary Pass Without Making Any Noise

Hyderabad: The BRS appears to have put on the back burner its plans to celebrate the anniversary of the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme (KLIS) inauguration, the June 21 date having come and gone quietly. The previous BRS government, and its leadership, has been under scrutiny by the Congress government, and the Justice P.C. Ghose commission of inquiry over the manner of construction of the project.

Party working president K.T. Rama Rao had on June 16 said that June 21, marking six years since the project’s inauguration, should be marked in a fitting manner to highlight the project’s greatness. He had said that this would be done in consultation with party president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who inaugurated the project in 2019.

These plans reportedly did not find favour with Chandrashekar Rao, who is learnt to have to have adopted an approach of staying away from controversies and providing ammunition for the Congress to launch attacks on him.

It is learnt that the idea was dropped as any event to mark the KLIS anniversary would have given instant ammunition to Congress, and to some extent the BJP, to mount an attack on the BRS saying the opposition party was celebrating a failure and bring unwarranted focus on the project.

This is especially so in the wake of Chandrashekar Rao, and the then irrigation minister T Harish Rao’s questioning by the Justice PC Ghose commission of inquiry in the second week of June.

Instead, the party is planning a meeting where it will discuss irrigation-related issues with its leaders as part of its plans to hold the Congress government accountable on the subject. It is yet to announce a date when such a meeting will be held.

As and when it will be held, it will focus on projects on what the BRS believes is the questionable track record of the Congress government, as in the case of Andhra Pradesh’s Godavari-Banakacharla link scheme, and its alleged failure to prevent AP from overdrawing water from the Krishna river. Meanwhile, Harish Rao is expected to lead the BRS charge on the Congress government