Former engineers of the irrigation department, who held critical and top positions and were directly involved in various aspects of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme was caught out for trying to mislead the Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose commission of inquiry probing various lapses related to the KLIS’ Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla barrages.
Hyderabad:Former engineers of the irrigation department, who held critical and top positions and were directly involved in various aspects of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme was caught out for trying to mislead the Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose commission of inquiry probing various lapses related to the KLIS’ Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla barrages.
During the cross examination on Thursday, it emerged that there were likely serious omissions right from the design stage ending with the operations and maintenance of the barrages that led to one block of Medigadda barrage cracking and sinking, and the other two developing serious under the foundation leaks.
Justice Ghose also questioned three officials from the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on the CAG report on KLIS and the officials responded that all their findings, including giving permissions in contravention of financial rules. Former deputy accountant general with CAG, who is now special commissioner commercial taxes, Nikhil Chakravarthy, said the DPR of the project showed Rs 81,911.01 as the project cost, but later, through 73 separate administrative approvals, a total of Rs 1,02,248 crore were sanctioned.
The commission was also informed that the Kaleshwaram Irrigation Project Corporation took loans from 15 different banks, but did not have any income. To a question on the CAG report mentioning project design faults, the officials responded that this was indeed the case.
Former ENC N. Venkateswarulu who was a key official during KLIS construction, faced the ire of the commission when he said he had written letters to the Central Design Organization over the delays in submitting the designs for the barrages, which in turn were holding up their construction. However, the Commission pointed out that from all the records, it was clear that he never wrote any such letter, following which Venkateswralu admitted to not having written any letters.
Another former ENC (general) , the overall head of the department, Muralidhar Rao, also admitted that he too never wrote any letter on this subject.
The Commission was told yet again that all decisions pertaining to change of location of Annaram and Sundilla barrages, and to keep the barrages filled up at all times, were taken by the then chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, and the then irrigation minister T Harish Rao.
