HYDERABAD: Former chairman of Telangana Water Resources Development Corporation V Prakash Rao deposed before the PC Ghose Commission of Inquiry on Kaleshwaram and defended the decisions of the BRS regime on the irrigation project.
Prakash supported the re-engineering of Kaleshwaram and changing the sources from Tummidihatti to Medigadda.
“After the formation of Telangana, the then Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao led a delegation on July 23, 2014 to Maharashtra and requested the then Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan to approve the request for Tummidihatti barrage at 152 metres height. The approval was not given owing to political pressures of elections slated in Maharashtra, and subsequently the BJP formed the government. Technical meetings were held on August 16, 2014 and February 4, 2015 at Hyderabad to resolve the technical issues with officials of Maharashtra regarding the height of the barrage and submergence in order to finalise the FRL, which remained unresolved,” Prakash said in his affidavit.
“On February 17, 2015, the CM of Telangana K Chandrasekhar Rao led a high-level delegation to Maharashtra and requested the then CM Devendra Fadnavis for approval of Tummidihatti barrage at +152 meters,” he added.
Prakash said that the talks were successful although Fadnavis was appreciative of taking Telangana’s share of water from Godavari but opposed the construction of barrage at +152 meters at Thummidihatti. Later, the BRS government proposed to construct the project at Medigadda, he said.
“The Central Water Commission assessed the net water availability at Medigadda barrage site is 284.30 tmcft in 2017. Out of this, 195 tmcft is being diverted under Kaleshwaram Project at Medigadda barrage. With this CWC certified that the selection of Medigadda location is correct in terms of water availability,” he added.
He also said that critics of Kaleshwaram like K Raghu and Vedire Sriram have been advocating that previous government had misinterpreted the comments of CWC on water availability at Tummidihatti barrage. But this was utterly wrong and misleading, he said.