Vijayawada: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has announced a schedule in the state assembly on Tuesday to complete the Polavaram irrigation project works by 2027.
Naidu also reiterated his “ambition” to take up interlinking of rivers of Godavari and Krishna to reach the water to Nagarjuna Sagar and to Bollapalli and Penakacherla. This, he said, would involve a cost of Rs 70,000 crore, and “ensure water for every acre of land.”
This would also help avoid drought in Andhra Pradesh, the CM said while taking part in a short discussion on ‘Polavaram and other irrigation projects in the state’.
Naidu said the works on the new diaphragm wall would begin in January 2025 and this would be completed by March 2026. Construction of the earth-cum-rock-fill dam gap-1 will be completed by February 2026 and December 2027.
He said the works on the D-Wall and the ECRF dam would be taken up simultaneously. The dam height would be 45.72 metres. The whole project would cost around Rs 55,000 crore.
Naidu thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Union minister for Jal Sakthi CR Patil for sanctioning Rs 12,157 crore for execution and planned completion of the Polavaram project in two years.
He dwelt at length on the history of the Polavaram project since 1941. It was initially planned as a storage reservoir on the Godavari river to be built at a cost of Rs 129 crore. In 1981, then chief minister T Anjaiah laid the stone for the project.
Naidu said Amaravati and Polavaram were being considered as “two eyes” of AP, and felt the need to develop the state’s long seacoast.
He explained how he prevailed upon the BJP-led NDA government in 2014 to issue an ordinance for merger of seven agency mandals of Telangana into AP to help take up the Polavaram project without facing any trouble from Telangana.
Naidu said that in 2014-19, “We executed the Poavaram project to the extent of 72 per cent and even achieved a Guinness record for taking up 32,215 cubic meters of concrete works to lay the spill channel.”
He said, “If our government continued to be in saddle after 2019, we could have completed the Polavaram project by 2020-21.”
The chief minister criticised the previous government for its failure to execute the project properly. It executed the project to the extent of only 3.84 per cent, he said and slammed it for the reverse tendering and for the change of the agency despite advice against it from the Polavaram Project Authority.
He said, “With no agency and officials to take care of the project for several months, the D-wall got damaged. The IIT, Hyderabad, had come up with a report to this effect.”
The chief minister told the house, “Based on advice from experts, we are going to erect a new D-wall, which would cost Rs 990 crore.”
“Once the Polavaram project is executed at a cost of Rs 55,000 crore including the cost for head works, land acquisition and resettlement and rehabilitation, it would help generate a new ayacut of 7.20 lakh acres and stabilize the additional ayacut in 24 lakh acres, with 80 tmc-ft of water going to Krishna river and 23.44 tmc-ft to the Visakhapatnam steel plant besides generation of 960 mw of hydro electric power.”
On the ambitious plan of interlinking rivers and ensuring water to every acre in the state, Naidu said that given the huge cost involved, it would be good if the Centre and the state government in public-private partnership mode could execute the project, lines similar to erection of national highways.
The private agency involved in the project could be given the right to collect a toll for recovery of the money spent, for a period of 20 to 25 years, he said.
