Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy termed Harish Rao’s presentation on the Kaleshwaram project as untruthful and misleading on facts and figures – only to save the party’s skin in the project’s fiasco.
In a counter to Mr. Rao’s claims, he questioned how the project, which lifted only 162 TMC of water in five years, of which 63 TMC was let out into the sea, could possibly irrigate the claimed 22 lakh acres.
“With only 99 TMC effectively available over five years, how can they claim to irrigate 22 lakh acres? That amounts to just 10.6 TMC per year, which is enough for 1,06,000 acres annually,” Mr. Reddy said in a statement on Saturday.
He also recalled that the BRS had initially celebrated the agreement with the Maharashtra government to construct the project at Tummidihatti with a grand public rally. However, they later shifted the project downstream to Medigadda with an eye on commissions, he alleged.
“The Congress had already built a 100-km-long open canal to move water via gravity from Tummidihatti to Yellampalli at virtually no power cost,” he said rejecting the argument that nothing was done by the Congress government.
He pointed out that the Central Water Commission (CWC) never stated that water was not available at Tummidihatti, contradicting Mr. Harish Rao’s claim in the presentation.
“Had the project been constructed at Tummidihatti, the power bill would have been just ₹1,000 crore. Instead, we are now burdened with ₹10,000 crore in annual power expenses and ₹16,000 crore in interest on loans due to K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Mr. Harish Rao’s greed,” he alleged.
Mr. Reddy also reminded that projects such as SRSP, Yellampalli, Lower Manair, Upper Manair, and Singur were all built under successive Congress governments.
Published – June 08, 2025 12:41 am IST