KVP poser to Naidu on Polavaram

New Delhi: Congress MP KVP Ramachandra Rao here on Sunday challenged Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to prove that his insistence on the state taking over the construction of Polavaram project was to the benefit of the people of the state. Placing before the media, the House proceedings in this regard and the correspondence between him and the officials concerned, Rao asked the CM to justify his rationale in seeking control over the execution of the national project.

Rao had asked the state as well the Central governments to inform the nation the present status of Polavaram project including the physical responsibilities and financial liabilities on the Central and the State Governments till the completion of the project in its full shape. It was crucial that the project be completed within the stipulated deadline or else the entire grant amount would be converted into loan by the Centre to which Naidu had agreed to.

Citing the answers of Minister of State for Water Resources Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, Ramachandra Rao reiterated that the Centre would not be responsible for the cost escalation of the irrigation component of the project over and above the estimated cost at price level of April 2014.

As per the Ministry of Finance Office Memorandum of September 30, 2016, the Central Government would provide 100 per cent of the remaining cost of the irrigation component only of the Polavaram Irrigation Project for the period starting from April 1, 2014 to the extent of the cost of the irrigation component on that date.

The Centre had also clarified at another instance that the project would not be completed by December 2018 as the pace of the works was very slow, he pointed out.

Rao expressed apprehensions that in view of the facts the mammoth cost revision by the Chief Minister of the project, would turn out to be a hug burden on State exchequer as the State had to bear the price escalations apart from power and drinking water components of the projects.

The Congress MP said there were indications that the State Government was planning to confine the project to a cofferdam of a height much below the approved dam height and pump the water into the left and right canals by lift irrigation systems instead of gravity based flow due to shortage of funds.

Ramachandra Rao questioned Naidu's motive in demanding handing over of the project to the State as it would impose a huge burden on the exchequer and ultimately people would suffer as a consequence.

Demanding to know the silence of the State Government in the delay over submission of revised estimate costs to the Centre as per 2014-15 calculations, he asked Naidu to justify how could be release payments to contractors on the basis of revised estimates from 2015-16 in the absence of the Centre's clearance.