VIJAYAWADA: Continuing the series of letters to Assembly Speaker Kodela Siva Prasad Rao over the Polavaram project issue, Congress Rajya Sabha MP KVP Ramachandra Rao on Wednesday released another letter with a set of 28 questions and asked the Speaker to get replies to them from officials, without the involvement of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Water Resources Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, to know the facts about the background of the Polavaram project and the efforts of the Congress in getting it.
“The Polavaram project construction got delayed due to the attitude of the government and due to its non-cooperation to the Polavaram Project Authority. The project was supposed to be completed by 2018. The delay in execution of the project is leading to additional financial burden on the State.
You are ignoring these facts and at the same time, undermining the efforts made by the previous Congress governments in the State and also the UPA at the Centre for the irrigation project. This is not desirable from a person who is holding a Constitutional position,” Ramachandra Rao said, in the letter which he wrote after Kodela’s letter in response to the MP’s previous letter.
Releasing the letter at a press conference in the city, the Rajya Sabha member also made a presentation on how the UPA government at the Centre and the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government in the State paved the way for the Polavaram project to get national project status.
Ramachandra Rao said that they have no objection with Kodela giving ‘publicity’ to the TDP and the Chandrababu Naidu government, but the Speaker, who should act in an unbiased manner going by his Constitutional position, should not attribute ‘undue credit’ to the government and also downplay the good efforts put up by other political parties in this regard. “If you think you have to resort to sycophancy to please the TDP leadership in view of your future political career, do it (sycophancy) in a way that it does not cause disrespect to your post of Assembly Speaker,” Ramachandra Rao suggested to Kodela.
The 28 questions posed by Ramachandra Rao included the clearances/permissions that the governments before 2004 had managed to get for the Polavaram project from the Centre and the clearances that the project got between 2004 and 2014.
“UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi visited the project site twice (on September 27, 2005 and March 14, 2008) while the Chief Minister or the irrigation ministers of the State before 2004 did not even look towards Polavaram. This shows the sincerity of the Congress and also the negligence shown by the TDP towards the irrigation project,’’ the MP maintained.