HYDERABAD: The Congress and the BJP have sought a high-level inquiry into the fire accident that claimed the lives of nine employees in an underground hydel station at Srsailam, while the TRS’ ally AIMIM s t e e red clear of any controversy.
While TPCC president and Nalgonda MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy sought a judicial inquiry into the incident and steps for prevention of recurrence of such incidents in the future, Congress working president A Revanth Reddy suspected a conspiracy angle.
“Was it an accident? or a conspiracy? I have already said that KCR has cooperated with AP to allow it to exploit Krishna waters much to the detriment of Telangana’s interests. The incident lends credence to suspicion that the hydel station was deliberately blown up to help AP,” he tweeted.
BJP State president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar demanded the TRS government to clear the doubt. He held Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and Energy Minister Jagadeesh Reddy accountable for the incident. Meanwhile, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi condoled the death of the employees.
INCIDENT TO AFFECT HYDEL POWER OUTPUT
A senior official of TS Genco, while terming the mishap ‘very unfortunate,’ said, “It is a golden project. The Srisailam hydel power plant has been helping us meet energy requirements on several occasions for the past 16 years. It seldom developed any problems.” The power plant, commissioned in 2004, had never seen any issues, sources said.
With Srisailam hydel power generation stalled, officials would be forced to increase the thermal power generation to compensate the loss of around 10-15 million units of hydel power. Owing to a dip in power demand from agriculture and domestic sectors, due to rains, officials had recently reduced power generation in three thermal power stations, and had been depending on hydel power for the past 15 days