VIJAYAWADA: Congress Rajya Sabha member KVP Ramachandra Rao in an open letter explained how Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has misled people of Andhra Pradesh with regard to Polavaram project.
Addressing media-persons in Hyderabad, he explained the contents of the open letter addressed to the Chief Minister. He said the Naidu government has never cooperated with Polavaram Project Authority set up by the Centre for the execution of the project.
In spite of repeated clarifications from the Centre that Polavaram is a national project, Naidu has constantly demanded it to treat Polavaram as a normal AIBP project, he said.
“As per the Union Cabinet decision on May 1, 2014, cost escalation along with resettlement and rehabilitation of the project displaced has to be borne by the Centre. However, with an ulterior motive, Naidu even agreed to cost estimations before 2014 to make the Centre agree to his demand to hand over the project to State,” he said.
When the PPA started work from January 1, 2015, fearing he would lose the hold on the project, GO 22 was issued, providing an opportunity for contractors to get additional funds in the name of EPC and Turnkey for two years.
When Polavaram Project Authority has asked for revised estimates and transfer of assets and liabilities since its first meeting in March 2015, the State never transferred them. When it was questioned in second PPA meeting, the answer was: the revised estimates will be prepared in 10 days time, but even after five months, that is at the time of third PPA meeting, they were the not prepared.
When the Centre made it clear that the project is a national project and not a state project, pressure was exerted to reimburse the amount spent on the project by the State after April 1, 2014.
In the 4th meeting of PPA, when the additional burden on the project cost due to GO 22 was questioned, the State government answered that 40 per cent of the contract value had been increased. The revised estimates were also not provided in the fifth meeting of the PPA held on April 20, 2016.
The Naidu government also said State will bear the power component cost and asked the Centre to release Irrigation component funds. Following it, for 16 months, there was no PPA meeting and on September 8, 2016, project headworks estimation costs were increased and once the ‘special package’ under which cost of Polavaram project was to be funded by NABARD, the revised estimates as per 2015-16 rates were submitted. When the expert committee has visited Polavaram project between April 19 and 22, 2017, the project estimates submitted were `46,926 crore of which 32,292 crore was for R&R as per the cost estimates of 2013-14.
However, on August 24, 2017 at the 6th PPA meeting, the project estimates were mentioned as `58,319 crore. That is an increase of `11,393 crore in a span of four months. `5000 crore were increased in headworks estimations, Rs 3,500 crore increase in Left Canal estimations and Rs 1,500 crore in right canal estimations. To speed up the project works, part of the headworks were proposed to be give to another contractor.
Despite PPA officials objections, fresh tenders for those part works were called and there were variations in publication of tenders in regular and online systems.
In the 7th PPA meeting, PPA officials made it clear that revised estimates in 2016 were not approved.
The estimated cost for R&R was `33,000 crore. When the officials were questioned as to how the state proposed to implement R&R, the reply was “in a phased manner”, which makes one wonder, if the project was a national project or a state project.
