HYDERABAD: The Irrigation department has kept the State Vigilance Commission’s report on the Kaleshwaram project on hold for the time being and reportedly decided to take more time to act against the “erring” engineers.
It may be recalled that the Vigilance Commission, which submitted its report in March this year, recommended action against 57 serving and retired engineers for irregularities in the construction of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS).
The state government had ordered a vigilance probe into the KLIS’s irregularities in January 2024. It has been close to six months since the Commission submitted its report, but the department is yet to initiate action against the engineers mentioned by the Commission.
A senior official of the department told TNIE that they had to verify the “liability” of the engineers once again. The Commission’s recommendation was “en masse”, the official said, and added that there was no involvement of some of the engineers mentioned by the Commission. Thus, the department had decided to verify the actual “liability” of the engineers named by the Commission. Any action would be initiated only after that, the official added.
It may be recalled that the Vigilance Commission recommended criminal proceedings against 17 engineers, including former engineer-in-chief C Muralidhar, Bhupathi Raju Nagendra Rao (ENC, Operations and Maintenance) and several Chief Engineers from Adilabad, Ramagundam, and other areas involved in the scheme.