Water Board ties itself up in knots over Sunkishala
Hyderabad: Even as the state government made it clear that the Sunkishala disaster had its foundations in the design and execution of the project during the previous regime led by the BRS and the corruption in the ten years of its rule, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply & Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) sought to downplay the collapse of the crucial retaining wall at the project, blaming nature.
The board is currently headed by K. Ashok Reddy as its managing director, who, incidentally, had previously worked as private secretary to irrigation minister T. Harish Rao in the BRS government’s first term from 2014 to 2018
During the second term of BRS, the official served in the office of Harish Rao, who had assumed the finance portfolio for the second time.
In its release, the board sought to dismiss the Sunkishala disaster as something minor, saying “of the three blocks in the sidewall, only the tunnel section collapsed.”
Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Virkramarka had made it clear on Thursday itself that the state government held the BRS regime responsible as the designs and work were approved by the then government and the seeds of the disaster were sown during this process.
However, the board overseeing the project, has not only given itself a clean chit but also appeared to have made an attempt in its explanation to give a pass to agency building the Sunkishala project.
While trying to protect itself, the board placed the blame on these expectations squarely at the feet of the contractor saying, in its news release, that “the agency thought that floods will reach Nagarjunasagar reservoir only towards the end of August, and that water level would reach the mid-tunnel level by then.”
It also appeared to have sought to help the agency by saying “once the water level recedes, the company will rebuild the sidewall at its own cost, and the initial estimates for this repair has been put at Rs 20 crore.”
Though the board now answers to the present government, its explanation of how everyone, including the contractor, was apparently taken by surprise at the “sudden” rise in inflows into the Nagarjunasagar reservoir, raised serious questions about whether the board officials were even aware that there were similar such inflows into the Nagarjunasagar reservoir in the past.
By saying so, the water board appeared to have washed its hands of any responsibility for the disaster. Had its top officials done their homework, and kept track of how the rain was filling up Krishna in its upper reaches, they would have known that filling of Nagarjunasagar would not be “sudden” but something that was likely to happen notwithstanding “expectations” of a late flood.
Incidentally, the same agency was also a significant contractor in the Kaleshwaram project and one of the components it built for that project – Laxmi pump house at Kannepally designed to lift water from Medigadda backwaters – was submerged in flood waters after a retaining wall at that pump house also collapsed.
When Block 7 of the Medigadda barrage of the Kaleshwaram project cracked and began sinking last October, the then BRS government adopted a similar line maintaining that the damage was just to one block and insignificant, the very line the board has now taken with respect to what happened at Sunkishala.