KCR government failed to protect lives during rains: Mohammed Ali Shabbir

Hyderabad: Senior Congress leader and former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir has blamed the TRS government for the huge loss of lives and property due to rains and floods in the State.

"More than 10 people lost their lives in rain-related incidents across Telangana State in the last five to six days. Most of these deaths could have been prevented if the State government would've taken enough precautionary measures," Shabbir Ali alleged in a media statement on Thursday. Shabbir Ali said Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has miserably failed to activate the Disaster Management system in the State despite receiving timely alerts on weather from the Meteorological Department.

Further, he said Monsoon Action Plan was not prepared for any district, especially those having big water bodies. "There was absolutely no pre-assessment on the possible impact of heavy rains on the lives of common people. Critical issues like the inundation of low-lying areas, breaching of tanks and lakes, identification of dilapidated structures, weak electricity poles, etc., were completely ignored.

Consequently, four people lost their lives due to electrocution when a live electric wire fell on their house in Kamareddy. Similar incidents of electrocution occurred at other places in the State," he said.

The Congress leader also accused CM KCR of deliberately neglecting the maintenance of old irrigation projects like the Kadam dam in the Adilabad district. He said projects like Kadam Narayana Reddy Project, which was built between 1949 and 1965, required special attention to face any eventuality. A technical snag was reported in 2018 when the officials were unable to open one of the 18 gates to discharge water during huge floods. Later, the experts proposed increasing the number of spillway gates and also constructing a tunnel to increase the discharge capacity to 5 lakh cusecs. The experts had also proposed the replacement of all 18 gates at a cost of Rs. 300 crores.

However, TRS Govt took no action which resulted in the breach of the left side of the bund on Wednesday night due to heavy inflows. He said this situation could have been avoided if the State Govt would've maintained the project properly.