Government to focus on relief AND rehabilitation of Polavaram

Polavaram: The State government will give priority to address relief and rehabilitation issues relating to the Polavaram project, said Water Resources Minister Dr. P Anil Kumar Yadav.

The Minister interacted with the officials concerned while inspecting and reviewing the Polavaram works here on Sunday. Later, addressing the media, he said that the previous government has done nothing for rehabilitation of the affected families. Moreover, the claims were also far from the actual facts, he added. He said that the State government had appointed an IAS officer to resolve the issues relating to Relief amd Rehabilitation. The government would address 10,000 petitions received under R&R to deliver justice to the affected families.

Criticising the earlier TDP regime for making false claims, the minister said that the government had wrongly stated that 70 per cent of the project works were over by completing only the concrete works. When the project cost itself was Rs 50,000 crore, how could the TDP claim that it completed 70 per cent works by spending a mere Rs 17,000 crore, he wondered.

With respect to relief and rehabilitation, the earlier government did absolutely nothing. No additional houses were allotted in addition to 3,000 houses given by the then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy out of total 1.06 lakh houses. He said that the government was committed to complete the project by next year.

MLA T Balaraju, Joint Collector K Venkata Ramana Reddy, Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner T Baburao Naidu, project Chief Engineer B Sudhakar Babu and others were present on the occasion.