Uttam slams BRS for political mileage

 Nalgonda: Irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday said that the BRS government had not accorded irrigation projects in south Telangana at par with those for north Telangana and blamed it for the collapse of a safety wall at the Sunkishala project on August 1.

He said that the BRS leaders were making a hue and cry over safety wall collapse to derive political mileage. The Sunkishala project’s design and works were awarded by the then BRS government in 2014, he said, and accused it of corruption in the Sunkishala project works.

Stating that the wall collapse was a minor accident, he opined that the loss would be borne by the contracting company. The incident would delay completion of the project by three months, Uttam Kumar Reddy added.

Along with Legislative Council chairman Gutha Sukender Reddy and agriculture minister Tummala Nageswara Rao, Uttam Kumar Reddy inspected the intake well of Sunkishala project, where a retaining wall had collapsed at Palthi thanda in Peddavoora mandal in Nalgonda district.

Uttam Reddy said that the BRS government had spent nearly Rs 1 lakh crore on KLIS in north Telangana but had not shown any interest in the completion of the Srisailam left bank canal (SLBC) tunnel in south Telangana. If the SLBC had been completed, there would have been no need for the Sunkishala scheme, he said.

He made it clear that the Congress government would complete SLBC works and the Dindi lift irrigation scheme at the earliest.

Nageswara Rao said that the contracting company had not brought the collapse of the retaining wall of Sunkishala project to the notice of the state government, which learnt of it only through the media.

A committee has been appointed by the state government to probe into the incident and action would be taken after receiving the report. As per the preliminary information, the contracting company continued the works without taking the flood water situation into consideration, which had resulted in the incident.

District collector C. Narayana Reddy, managing director of HMWS&SB K. Ashok Reddy and other officials attended the programme.