HYDERABAD: Union Jal Shakti Minister’s advisor and chairman of the Task Force on Interlinking of Rivers Sriram Vedire said that the Central Water Commission (CWC) did not approve the designs and investment clearances for the Kaleshwaram project.
Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, Sriram said that the CWC approved only hydrology (water availability) and interstate aspects. The CWC did not approve the designs and investment clearances. As per the “Guidelines for submission, appraisal and acceptance of irrigation and multi-purpose projects, 2017”, when there is a Central Design Organisation (CDO) in any state, CWC will not look into the designs, Sriram said.
The CDO of the Irrigation department of Telangana has prepared the designs of Kaleshwaram Project. So, it is the state CDO that is responsible for the designs, he said. Investment clearance was also not given by CWC, as the state did not answer to the queries raised by the commission. So, it was very clear that any design flaws (which were observed with the recent Medigadda episode) are of the CDO, Sriram said.
He said that Kaleshwaram’s location was moved to Medigadda by the BRS government from Tummadihatti. One of the main reasons mentioned by them was that there was only 67 tmcft of water was available at Tummadihatti and not 165 tmcft, as was calculated by the CWC. “This is not true. CWC always mentioned that there is 165 tmcft of water at Tummadihatti. It would have been a good project with utilisation of about 165 tmcft with a cost of about Rs 40,000 crore. Moving to Medigadda location has made the project cost go up by three times that is up to Rs 1.2 lakh crore,” he alleged.
He said the state government did not provide information sought by the National Dam Safety Authority on the Medigadda incident. He, however, said that NDSA had formed a committee which would soon visit the state and the state is requested to cooperate by providing all the information sought. It has been more than four months since the incident occurred and no more precious time is to be lost, Sriram felt.