Damage to reservoir waiting to snowball into major controversy in poll-bound Telangana

Hyderabad: Damage to a barrage that was built as part of the BRS government’s prestigious Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) is likely to snowball into a major controversy ahead of the November 30 polls for 119 seats in the Telangana Assembly.

Of the several reservoirs built by the Telangana government as part of KLIP, Medigadda (Lakshmi) reservoir in Mahadevpur of Jaishankar Bhupalapally district was the starting point and it witnessed sinking of a few pillars two days ago.

While the ruling BRS government suspects sabotage, the opposition Congress has used the development as an opportunity to support their charges of large scale corruption in KLIP, compromising the quality of work.

The Congress has also planned a ‘visit’ of irrigation experts and others to the KLIP on Wednesday to ‘expose’ the bad quality of the work on the project.

The BJP on its part had complained to the Centre and had asked for a safety check of the barrage. While BJP state president and Union minister G Kishan Reddy was quick to write to the Centre, the Union Jal Shakti ministry was even quicker to deploy a central team to the site.

While a few piers of the barrage witnessed sinking on the evening of October 21, the news came out late at night. The irrigation department staff said they heard a loud sound on the evening of October 1, weeks after which the sinking took place.

The irrigation department’s Assistant Executive Engineer, A Ravikanth, had already registered a complaint with the Mahadevapura police. District SP Kiran Khare said that they have registered an FIR and launched a probe.

He said a preliminary probe ruled out the hand of Maoists behind the damage. However, special teams have been deployed to probe the sabotage angle as raised by the state irrigation department.

The FIR has been registered under Sections 3 and 4 of public property damage act and IPC Section 427.

“When the KLIP construction was completed, the state government turned it into a tourism spot. They have taken hordes from across the state to show as if its an engineering marvel. But now, when the chinks are being exposed, why is it not taking the public there to show them the truth. That’s why we have decided to take people from Husnabad to show the real KLIP project,” former Karimnagar MP and Congress BC leader Ponnam Prabhakar told Deccan Herald.

Experts from the state irrigation department and L&T that had executed the work had conducted a field survey and found that pillars 15 to 20 under block number 6 sunk by 0.6 meters.

The 1.6 km long Medigadda barrage with a storage capacity of 16.17 TMC of water was built to irrigate 1.85 lakh acres of new land and stabilize the 1.18 lakh acres of existing irrigated land and provide water to millions including the residents of Hyderabad.

The barrage is equipped with 85 Hydro Mechanical Radial Gates fixed between the gigantic concrete piers that are 110 m in length, 4 m / 6 m in width and 25 m height. The construction used concrete equivalent to what would be required to build seven Burj Khalifas, steel equivalent to building 15 Eiffel Towers, and excavated earth that could fit six pyramids of Giza.

Further, the team set a world record by pouring 25,584 cubic metres of concrete in 72 hours. The project was completed by L&T in 2019 at a cost of approximately Rs 1,849 cr.

A six-member Central team led by Central Water Commission (CWC) member Anil Jain visited the Medigadda barrage on Tuesday to examine the safety of the dam. The team also held a meeting with the officials of Telangana. The central team is expected to submit its report shortly.