According to sources in the government, the irrigation department has changed its story over the issue of the certificate to L&T and the records on which the decision was taken.
It first said that the completion certificate was issued on 15.03.2021 based on the Measurement Book AMB No.56/2018, but changed its story when questioned by V&E sleuths that the certificate was based on Measurement Book AMB No 65/2020. A Measurement Book contains details of day wise work taken up and completed.
The V&E officials are learnt to have searched in vain for AMB No. 56/2018 in the records only to discover that this book simply did not exist. Following this, the V&E confronted the irrigation department’s executive engineer Ch Tirupati Rao, who had signed the completion certificate issued to L&T, about the missing book, and how the certificate was issued when the very basis for it did not exist.
The excuse trotted out by the senior irrigation department official was that a “typographical error” occurred while issuing the certificate to L&T that the completion certificate was based on AMB No 56/2018. “Due to a typographical error AMB 65/2020 was printed as 56/2018 and it may be kindly read as AMB No 65/2020,” Tirupathi Rao said in his letter on January 21, this year. His response was to two letters from the V&E to him on January 20 and 22 on this matter.
Anyone who looks at a keyboard, be it on a typewriter or a computer, will know that such ‘typographical error’ is not really possible due to the way the keys are placed. For now, it appears like the irrigation officials did not expect such an investigation and just issued the certificate to L&T based on a fictitious Measurement Book, the sources said.
L&T has been saying that the completion certificate, dated 15.03.2021, absolves it of any responsibility with respect to taking up repairs at Medigadda at its cost as the ‘defect liability period’ of two years during which the company would have been responsible for any repairs or refurbishment of the barrage, or its rehabilitation, ended two years from the date it was issued the certificate.
It may be recalled that part of the Medigadda barrage developed grievous cracks and sank on October 21, 2023. As per the completion certificate issued by the irrigation department, the defect liability period ended after March 14, 2023, almost seven months before Medigadda barrage started breaking up, and L&T has stuck to its guns so far claiming that it is not responsible for what happened at Medigadda in October 2023.
