Polavaram project should be constructed as per old design

KAKINADA: Polavaram Sadhana Samithi president and former minister Yerra Narayana Swami has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy not to reduce the height of Polavaram Project and said it should be constructed as per old design and height. “Then only can the aim of the project be achieved.”

He said if the project height is reduced, the water capacity can also be reduced for the right and left canals. He requested the Centre to bear the entire project cost without creating any hurdle or restriction and release the funds on various counts including for rehabilitation.

Swami said it was not correct on the part of the central government to say that the state government should build the project within a limit of Rs 55,000 crore by reducing the height of the project. For, Rs 28,000 crore should be given towards rehabilitation packages alone to the victims.

Narayana Swamy also criticised the privatization proposal on the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and other public sector units. He said the central governments, after Independence, sought to create a socialistic pattern of society and set up several PSUs. The Centre nationalised banks. Now, if those PSUs and other government assets are sold, it would be a gross injustice to the people of the country, he said.