DC Edit | KLIS: Where KCR’s Dream Clashed With Public Good
The commission called everything about the barrages a result of a one-man show led by Mr Rao with the lesser actors doing everything they can to make the wishes of one man come true without consideration of the consequences — giving a go-by to rules, regulations, and worst of all, fundamental design and engineering requirements
After years of claims that the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme is the greatest river project built in the fastest time possible, and portraying it as the final solution of sorts for all irrigation and drinking water supply shortages in Telangana, the crows have come home roost for former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi president had never once let up on any opportunity to declare that he was the man, the brains and the driving force behind the project.
However, the report from the Justice P.C. Ghose Commission of Inquiry constituted last year by the Congress government to inquire into irregularities with respect to KLIS’s barrages are nothing short of a nightmare for Mr Rao and his party.
Much to the BRS’s chagrin, the commission unequivocally placed Mr Rao at the centre of all decision making and the eventual serious damages to the Medigadda barrage, a portion of which has cracked and sank into the river bed, and similar problems of lesser intensity at Annaram and Sundilla.
While a political battle is already on between the BRS bristling with indignation and the Congress government led by A. Revanth Reddy who made it clear the government is not interested in a witch hunt, the takeaway is not just about the profligacy of the then BRS government that spent around Rs 90,000 crore on KLIS, but about Mr Rao’s Ozymandian sense of infallibility.
The commission called everything about the barrages a result of a one-man show led by Mr Rao with the lesser actors doing everything they can to make the wishes of one man come true without consideration of the consequences — giving a go-by to rules, regulations, and worst of all, fundamental design and engineering requirements.
What was supposed to be, at least in Mr Rao’s mind, a series of edifices that would stand the test of time and write his name in history books as a man who achieved the impossible and stand tall at least 100 years, began decaying the year they were put to use in 2019. No amount of cover-ups could save the day for him, or his party from a political drubbing in elections once Medigadda barrage cracked.
The Ghose Commission report made it clear that neither K. Chandrashekar Rao, nor his foot soldiers had public good in their hearts or minds. The BRS and Mr Rao will have many bones to pick in the coming days, but it is unlikely that the man himself will get his ageing feet wet in the battle that lies ahead for him.
For, all those who colluded in the Kaleshwaram project have not only laid to waste a political career but also vast resources that no state can afford to squander in the manner that they did with the Kaleshwaram project’s barrages.
ACB raids on engineers associated with the project have revealed massive wealth running into hundreds of crores of rupees amassed by them, while the outcome of rent seeking behaviour by their political masters might reveal even more mind-boggling numbers.
For the Congress government, the call for action is clear that this is not about politics but about taking the investigations to their logical conclusion, punishing the guilty as per law and making the contractors repair the barrages at their own cost as recommended by the Ghose Commission.
