BRS seeks SIT probe into Medigadda Barrage damage

General secretary of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) R.S. Praveen Kumar has demanded that the Telangana government institute an inquiry by a special investigation team (SIT) into the sinking of a few piers of the Medigadda Barrage of the Kaleshwaram project.

Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad on Saturday (August 16, 2025), he claimed that both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) conspired to damage the structure with a larger political plan to dethrone the BRS Government. An assistant executive engineer manning the structure had complained to Mahadevpur police station on October 22, 2023, stating that loud sounds had come from the barrage on October 21 before some piers had crippled.

The project engineer had also expressed suspicion that there could be some anti-social elements behind the loud noise before the structure was damaged, the former IPS officer said, adding that sinking of barrage would not generate loud sound.

He said that Medgadda, Annaram and Sundilla Barrages of the Kaleshwaram project had withstood a record flood, highest in the last 500 years (nearly 30 lakh cusecs), in July 2022 and no damage was caused. The National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) experts had arrived in response to a letter addressed by Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy but it did not even make a mention of the loud noise before the structure suffered damage.

Even the Mahadevepur police had failed to take up any investigation into the project engineer’s complaint and an examination of call records/data of some key leaders of the Congress and BJP could have revealed more information, he said.