Spanner in works

NEW DELHI: Damage to the Kaleshwaram irrigation project in Telangana could not have happened at a more inopportune time for the Bharata Rashtriya Samiti (BRS) government in the state. Assembly elections are three weeks away, and the ruling party is in the dock like never before in its 10 years in power. The Congress is on a surge to recover a state that was once its pocket borough, and the mismanagement of Kaleshwaram is helping it mobilise the anti-incumbency vote against chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Considering that he boasts about designing some of the works himself, Kaleshwaram is Chandrasekhar Rao’s signature project. Spread over 13 districts, it’s a sprawling complex of barrages, reservoirs, canals and lift irrigation works that has so far cost the state exchequer over Rs 1 lakh crore and counting. The opposition has always called it a white elephant that requires 6,000 MW of electricity, costing Rs 7,000 crore annually, to pump the water from the Godavari. Irrigation projects in Telangana, and in its precursor state of undivided Andhra Pradesh, have always had the smell of corruption with work contracts going to contractor cartels connected to the ruling party of the moment.

Against that context, reports last month that six piers of the Medigadda barrage of the project have sagged and fissured due to subsidence have electrified the electoral atmosphere in the state. A team of experts from the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) inspected the damage and reported that a combination of issues involving faulty planning and design and poor quality control and operation and maintenance led to the sinking. It ruled that the barrage in its present condition has been “rendered useless until fully rehabilitated”. For now, water has been drained from Medigadda and two reservoirs downstream and a coffer dam is to be constructed to begin repairs.

But the damage to the BRS government may be irreparable before the elections. Its response to the NDSA findings has been surprisingly feeble for a characteristically feisty ruling party. It said the authority’s findings of mismanaged and faulty construction are unsubstantiated and denied withholding any data from the central experts. Privately, ministers have insinuated that NDSA experts arrived at their findings without a proper investigation of the damage, and were perhaps tutored by the ruling party at the Centre, the BJP. While this latter ruse is quite plausible after the examples set by central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI, it is not a good enough response to the facts of the case, which are that several piers of the barrage have indeed subsided and leaks have sprung from reservoirs downstream.

Irrespective of electoral considerations, the BRS is the party in government at the moment, and must carry out its governance functions. The situation demands that urgent repairs commence at once, and that the contractors are held to account. A full and thorough investigation must be launched to pinpoint the failings of the contractors and relevant government agencies. The state government must also furnish all the data on the 20 criteria listed by the NDSA. While the ruling party might plead that it is being unfairly judged at a crucial time, it must realise that such are the wages of concentrating all powers in and around the CM with no scope for any of the ministries or autonomous agencies to subject public works to due process and vigilance.