HYDERABAD
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao has ridiculed the double standards of the NDA government and the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA), stating that they are not acting on the sinking of the coffer dam of the Polavaram project for the second time.
In a statement, Mr. Rao said on Saturday that the NDSA had not taken up investigation into the washing away of the Polavaram cofferdam in 2020 that happened for the first time, even after being asked to go into the matter. The NDA government gave national project status to Polavaram and funded its construction â but is not looking into the quality aspects of construction, he said.
During the run-up to the last Assembly elections in Telangana, a few piers of the Medigadda Barrage of Kaleshwaram project sank and damaged the structure under suspicious circumstances, but neither the BJP leaders nor those of the Congress, who had been indulging in mudslinging on Kaleshwaram project continuously, and terming it as âkuleshwaramâ (a collapsed project) repeatedly â had raised an issue on Polavaram, Mr. Rao said.
He sought to know if the BJP and the Congress have the guts to term Polavaram as âkulavaramâ since its coffer dam was washed away once and sunk for the second time. In the second instance, it sunk for 10 meters width and about 8 meters deep, and the Andhra Pradesh government had taken up repairs on a war-footing silently, he said.
On the other hand, the âfoolishnessâ of the Congress government is preventing it from taking up repairs on Medigadda Barrage and in giving water to the large ayacut depending on waters lifted from the point, even 20 months after coming to power, he said.
Further, the NDSA proved its double standards by not taking up investigation into the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel collapse in February that buried eight workers, technicians and engineers alive. It is also indicative of the Congress-BJP conspiracy against Kaleshwaram, he alleged.
Published â August 16, 2025 09:57 pm IST
