Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Sunday claimed to have "clues" on a conspiracy to engineer a cloudburst over the Godavari basin, flooding of which marooned several areas located along its course in the state, while speaking at a review meeting in Bhadrachalam on Sunday.
“A new method called cloudburst seems to have been put into practice. There are conspiracy theories also. But I am not sure how far this is correct. But certain countries intentionally engineered cloudburst earlier in Leh-Ladakh and Uttarakhand. We got clues that they have recently done over Godavari basin also,” the CM said.
Opposition parties jumped on the comments, while weather experts ruled out the occurrence of cloudbursts in the recent past.
BJP state chief Bandi Sanjay termed the comments “joke of the century”, while TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy said the CM must share clues with central agencies like RAW, and called the CM ‘James Bond 006’.
Bandi Sanjay claimed the remarks were a ploy by the CM to cover up his failures. “Chief Minister KCR commenting that there is a foreign conspiracy behind the heavy rains is ridiculous. KCR is the biggest conspirator, who will believe his words? Perhaps the CM is delusional. He needs to be admitted to the Erragadda Hospital for better treatment,” Sanjay said.
Revanth took a shot at the BJP as well, demanding that PM Narendra Modi take Rao into custody for his remarks.
Cloudbursts are spells of over 100 mm of rain within an hour, which, according to experts, did not take place in Telangana this monsoon. The India Meteorological Department (IMD), however, could not confirm if a cloudburst had occurred in the state, but IMD sources said that it was unlikely.
Mahesh Palawat, the vice president of Skymet Weather Services, a private firm that provides weather forecasting services, said, “As a weather expert, I do not know if such technology exists. If the Chief Minister says that, he must have some knowledge about it. There is technology to make it rain by sprinkling silver iodide into the clouds (cloud seeding), but it is very expensive and will not result in heavy rains as witnessed in the past few days.”
