VIJAYAWADA: A day after shooting off a letter to the Prime Minister on the Polavaram issue, former MP and senior Congress leader KVP Ramachandra Rao wrote a letter to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday, requesting him not to agree to reduction of the project height, even if the Centre exerts pressure for it.
In the letter, the former MP said any reduction of the height will not serve the very purpose of the project. “Former Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy strived to construct Polavaram project at +150 feet level in accordance with the permission given by the Central Water Commission (CWC) after the Godavari Tribunal agreed to it in 1980,” he reminded Jagan.
In the two-page letter written in Telugu, KVP said even the government apparatus is unable to say when the Polavaram project will get completed. “It is painful to see the inordinate delay in the project that YSR dreamt of completing to ensure water for Rayalaseema and Visakhapatnam, besides Krishna and Godavari deltas,” he said.
The Congress leader said at the time of State bifurcation, Polavaram project was declared a national project with a stipulation that its entire cost would be borne by the Centre. However, for the reasons known to it, the Modi government decided to entrust the project construction to the State government, which was wholeheartedly welcomed by the then government headed by N Chandrababu Naidu.
“When you (Jagan) formed the government, people like me thought the construction of the project would be handed over to the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA), expressly formed for the project construction, so there would not be any financial burden on the State. However, it did not happen,” he observed.
KVP said after the State took over the construction of the project, the Centre became inactive in the release of funds, redressal of the objections raised by the other States, and clearance of DPR. “Particularly, in case of land acquisition and R&R package, which requires around `30,000 crore, the Centre is behaving like it has nothing to do with the issue. Given the financial situation, the State is not in a position to take up the project on its own,” he pointed out.
He expressed concern over the reports emerging that the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government is leaning towards accepting the Centre’s suggestion to decrease the height of the project to +140 as the State is facing fund crunch. “If it is anything less than +150 feet FRL, there is no scope for storing water in the project and it will in no way serve the purpose of the project in the first place,” he felt.
The former MP said the Centre is making such suggestion so as to escape from the responsibility of paying for the R&R for the displaced families in contours between 140 and 150 feet, which will require large amount of funds.
He said the Polavaram project cost in its entirety has to be borne by the Centre and he had even filed a petition in the High Court in 2017 for the same. “As the State is yet to file the counter in the case, the hearing has been pending for the past five-and-a-half years,” he said and urged Jagan not to accept any decrease in the project height under any circumstances, yielding to the pressure from the Centre.