Hyderabad: Justice B. Sudarshan Reddy, former judge of the Supreme Court of India, said that the K. Chandrasekhar Rao-led Telangana state government suffers from a “trust deficit” and views the Opposition which knocks on the doors of the court as enemies. This is dangerous for democracy.
Debate is the essence of the democratic process, he said, and appealed to people to keep away from leaders who speak debasing language to score political points. “Such language is not inherent in Telangana culture,” the former judge said.
He said citing pending cases in courts as the reason for dissolving the Assembly was untenable, as courts were in the Constitutional scheme of things.
Justice Reddy said governments in power try to suppress the voice of the Opposition leaders.
Punching holes in the state government’s clai-ms on the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme, which he said is an “engineering blunder” Telangana Joint Action Committee convenor Raghu Kancherla said an additional burden of '20,000 crore has been forced on the people of Telangana with very small benefits. He alleged that the state government was indulging in marketing gimmicks on water availability. He demanded an enquiry into the shifting of the project site from Tummidihatti to Medigadda as the cost has escalated, and data on water availability was unreliable and the central water commission's observations had been selectively quoted when they belonged to unrelated projects.
An additional burden of '1,187 crore has to be borne by the people every year towards electricity charges due to the change in location, Mr Kancherla alleged.
Releasing a fact sheet on the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project, Mr Kancherla said the Detailed Project Report (DPR) assumed the electricity cost at '3 per unit, which is unlikely in future taking into account the fixed and variable costs of power generation companies. He said the actual power charges could be in the range of '8,135 crore against the government estimate of '4,067 crore on consumption of 1355.8 crore units at the rate of '6 per unit. The government has to spend '12, 216 crore per annum on the project, he said.
Sounding the alarm on the project investment estimates, he said they have already increased, from '80,500 crore to '1,00,000 crore. He said that per acre cost to the farmer would be around '1.4 lakh per year.
