BJP wants centre to take up Polavaram project

The message from the state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to YS Jaganmohan Reddy government is loud and clear, it wants the YSRCP government to speed up the construction of Polavaram multipurpose project on river Godavari, lest it will urge the centre to take over.

Polavaram is a national project built under a tripartite structure, the Centre, the state and Polavaram authority. While the centre is the funding agency the state is the executioner of the project under the supervision of the authority.

A team consisting of state president Kanna Lakshminarayana and state in-charge Sunil. V. Deodhar visited the project site to have a fresh perspective of the project after Jagan took over the reins from Nara Chandrababu Naidu. The team will discuss the project issue with Union Minister for Jal Sakthi, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat.

“The TDP government used the project to promote itself and delayed its execution, the present government on the other hand, opted for reverse tendering on the pretext of large scale corruption by Naidu,” Kanna said in Kakinada. However, the BJP leaders demanded Jagan to come out with substantial proof that Naidu resorted to corruption.

BJP’s changing stance

The BJP team expressed unhappiness over the tardy progress of the project in the past four months. The Jagan government after coming to power has stopped the works and terminated contract with the Navayuga group. It then went for reverse tendering and ended up okaying tenders filed by single contractor the MEIL (Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited) group. “We will meet the union minister and urge him to take over the project,” Kanna said.

Taking an entirely different point of view the BJP now showing its true colours to Jaganmohan Reddy. The IT raids on MEIL headquartered in Hyderabad on Thursday and the recent CBI’s strong counter against Jagan’s quid-pro-quo cases are seen as the changing mood of the national party. Earlier BJP along with YSRCP made a long list of allegations on Naidu and even alleged him of using the Polavaram project as an ATM.

On the other hand, Jaganmohan Reddy tried to set the things right with New Delhi by meeting the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invite him to attend the Rythu Bharosa programme. The YSRCP also supported the abrogation of article 370 Bill in the parliament. But the state unit of BJP is making all efforts to take full credit of completion of the Polavaram project.