Revanth Reddy said the Congress government viewed irrigation as a top priority department and in 2024 recruited 738 assistant executive engineers
Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Thursday said that the state government would soon complete the process of recruitments for Groups I, II, and III, and pointed out that some politically-motivated cases filed in courts were holding up the completion of the Group I recruitment process.
Addressing 434 assistant engineers and junior technical officers of the irrigation department who were handed their appointment orders at a special function at Jal Soudha, the irrigation department headquarters, Revanth Reddy cautioned them not to follow instructions from political leadership blindly.
Revanth Reddy also called on all the new recruits to go through the Kaleshwaram project records, visit its barrages and learn how not to make mistakes. “Even soil tests for the foundations of the barrages were not done. The man who claimed that he read 80,000 books and claimed he was the engineer for the project,” he said
“Officials blindly followed instructions of the then leader who flew in a helicopter, picked the sites for the barrages from the air, and the contractors built them there. The result is there for all to see. Kaleshwaram has become in the world a symbol of a project that collapsed within three years.”
“Those who followed political instructions blindly during the construction of the Kaleshwaram project, the Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla Barrages, have their names listed in the Vigilance and NDSA reports. The advice from the vigilance was to practically hang them. This was because decades of experience of engineers was ignored,” Revanth Reddy said.
The Chief Minister said the recruits to the irrigation department — which he said is led by the efficient and senior leader N. Uttam Kumar Reddy — should not see their jobs as something that gives them a monthly salary, but as taking part in building Telangana for the future.
“Some parties used the emotional pull of the ‘neelu, nidhulu, niyamakalu’ slogan for political gain, came to power, and ruled the state for 10 years. They spent more than Rs.2 lakh crore on irrigation, and on Kaleshwaram alone, Rs.1.02 lakh crore was paid to the contractors. Despite such huge spending, all the projects that were taken up in unified AP in Telangana remained neglected,” he said.
The Congress government has prioritised many of these projects that were launched in the past of Jala Yagnam before Telangana state was formed and were kept pending in the 10 years of the BRS rule. “We will complete all those where by completing the balance quarter of work, the projects can be made operational. There were several such projects that were neglected, be it the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy, Sitarama, Dummagudem or the SLBC tunnel project.”
“The BRS government had to spend just around Rs.2,000 crore to complete just 10 km of tunnelling to complete the 44-km long tunnel project that would have irrigated three lakh acres. Because it was neglected for 10 years, when work recommenced, all the accumulated water and material collapsed resulting in the death of eight workers in the tunnel, Revanth Reddy said.
He said the Congress government viewed irrigation as a top priority department and in 2024 recruited 738 assistant executive engineers. With Wednesday’s appointments, a total of 1,161 engineers and technical personnel have been recruited in the last 14 months. The process of employing 2,000 personnel to monitor and maintain irrigation systems is also on.
Irrigation minister Uttam Kumar Reddy called on the newly recruited staff to dedicate themselves to excellence and aspire to become engineering legends like Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya and Nawab Mehdi Nawaz Jung Bahadur. He said the irrigation department had around 12,000 people, including 4,000 engineers. The government, he said, is pursuing an ambitious mission to bring 127 lakh acres under assured irrigation.
