Kaleshwaram Barrage Repairs Stuck in Standoff With Contractors

HYDERABAD: “Your completion certificate now stands cancelled.” — this could well be a message in waiting for Afcons which built the Annaram barrage, and Navayuga that constructed the Sundilla barrage of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme, after a similar action was taken last September against L&T which built the Medigadda barrage. The irrigation department is feeling the pressure to get the three agencies in line to do its bidding of agreeing to foot the bills for all activities related to repairs and rehabilitations of the barrages.

Sources said that action similar to that against L&T PES-JV could be on the cards with irrigation department officials told to do the preliminary study of the issue and prepare proper grounds for cancelling the completion certificates issued to Afcons and Navayuga, if the government decides that this could be the last measure to make the two companies fall in line.

After the tactic not yielding the desired results from L&T PES JV, the officials, it is learnt, have been told to thoroughly study and explore how such a decision, if taken, can be made foolproof and force the hands of the companies to do the department’s bidding.

Incidentally, despite cancellation of the certificate to L&T PES JV, all indications so far are that the department failed to make any headway in making the company agreeable to foot all bills related to any work connected to the barrage’s repairs and rehabilitation, including the costs towards conducting the various geophysical, geotechnical and other tests at the Medigadda barrage.

It is not just L&T, but the other two companies to have maintained that any and all problems at the barrages were not because of faulty construction — the only task they were contracted for — but arose from designs that were provided by the irrigation department.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the irrigation department, which wrote to L&T PES-JV on February 2 saying the company must own up to the problems at the Medigadda barrage and agree to do whatever is required to get the barrage back into shape at its cost, has shot off similar letters to Afcons and Navayuga. However, sources in the department said that it was to receive any responses to its latest round of notices.

Sources said that all three companies — Afcons, Navayuga, and L&T — have been saying that since their contracts are completed and the projects handed over to their owners – the irrigation department – any work must be viewed as new work, which means that the irrigation department should agree in writing that the companies will be paid the costs for the tests.

“We believe that the companies will have no option but to fall in line at the end and take up repairs at their costs, after all, the problems including dislodging of the blocks downstream, and the erosion of the wearing coat in all vents of three barrages, happened on their watch,” an irrigation department official said.

With this being the current situation, the chances for any designs to be ready in the near future are non-existent and with the design consultant for the purposes, Afry India, chosen for the task, officials said the process of obtaining test results, preparing the designs and then get them vetted by the Central Water Commission could take at least an year. This means that Telangana will need to wait for at least one more year to find out the actual plans, if any, for rehabilitation of the three Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme barrages will be in place by the time the next work season begins with the onset of 2027 summer season.