BRS Pumping Up KLIS Issue, a Likely Ploy to Insulate KCR

Hyderabad: The BRS, haunted by the near-disaster that the Kaleshwaram project has turned into under its watch, appears to be desperately trying to up the ante accusing the Congress government of inaction and not putting the project to appropriate use.

At the heart of the issue for the BRS is the real prospect of its president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao being called to depose before the Justice P.C. Ghose Commission of Inquiry, a prospect that the opposition party views as near blasphemy.

Worried over this prospect, the BRS has launched a fresh campaign with its working president K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday and Friday leading a party MLAs’ visit to the project’s Kannepalli ‘Lakshmi’ pump house and the partially sunk Medigadda barrage to make a case showing the flowing Godavari river and the still standing barrage as a testament to the vision and construction acumen of the BRS government.

Rama Rao’s latest demand of pumping water from the Kannepalli pump house to lift water from Medigadda’s upstream region and pour it into the upstream of Annaram barrage, even as he dismissed the partial sinking of the Medigadda barrage as a ‘small problem’, is believed to be more of a strategic demand to raise political heat on the Kaleshwaram project amidst the possible eventuality of Chandrashekar Rao having to explain his role and decision making in all aspects of the project before the Justice Ghose commission.

If Chandrashekar Rao is asked to depose before the Commission, the BRS is expected to launch a noisy campaign charging the Congress government with a political witch-hunt targeting its president, and try to insulate him from any potential fallout from the findings of the commission if the find his culpability and that of the BRS government he led – on why a part of Medigadda barrage almost came close to collapse, and why Annaram and Sundilla barrages sprang serious leaks, and why two of the three pump houses of the project were flooded.

If the Congress response so far is anything to go by — with irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy leading the charge and trashing the BRS’s insistence, claims, demands, and possible notice of direct action of going and switching on the motors at the project’s pump houses – then the principal opposition party may well have to swim against the tide on the issue.

The threat to the barrages — as the NDSA made it clear in its direction that no storage must be attempted — is very real if any attempt to store water at them is made. Unless water is stored, the pump houses – at Kannepalli, Siripuram, and Goliwada – cannot be used to lift water from Medigadda to Annaram, from Annaram to Sundilla and from Sundilla to Sripada Yellampalli reservoir.

This would mean closing the gates at Annaram and Sundilla, putting the barrages at grave risk, just the kind of risk the BRS is seeking to protect its chief from.