For the last 10 days, Telugu Desam Party leaders and the yellow media that supports them have been raising a lot of hue and cry over a mechanical boat getting stuck in a crest gate of Prakasam Barrage on Krishna river at Vijayawada.
The TDP leaders, including their junior boss Nara Lokesh, went on to allege that the boat was deliberately pushed into the barrage to block water from being released into the downstream so that the water level in Krishna river raises to inundate the river-front residence of TDP president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu at Vundavalli.
Lokesh even tweeted that the irrigation department authorities had miserably failed to remove even a boat stuck up in the crest gate, leading to the death of an innocent person.
“What is this arrogance? The incident happened right in the presence of irrigation minister. How can the government treat the lives of people so cheaply?” he asked.
On Sunday, however, the irrigation department authorities with the help of expert teams from the state and Karnataka, and state and national disaster response force personnel, managed to remove the boat stuck up in the 68th gate in which the boat. The gate was finally shut after a gap of about 10 days.
The boat was removed without causing any damage to the gate. In fact, two boats hit the Prakasam Barrage when the Krishna river was in spate.
One of them passed downstream through a gate while the other got stuck. As it was stuck in a critical position, officials were unable to remove it for days and waited for expert teams to turn up.
Now that the boat was removed from the gate, the authorities started investigating as to who the boat belonged to.
And they discovered that the boat belongs to one Garimella Manikantha Chowdary, a close associate of former irrigation minister Devineni Umamaheshwar Rao from Mylavaram.
It appeared the entire boat drama was stage-managed by Lokesh and his team to blame the YSR Congress party government headed by Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy to gain political mileage.
Sources said the police are getting ready to file a criminal case against Manikantha Chowdary for his negligence and criminal conspiracy to defame to the government.
“The case is likely to be filed later on Monday or Tuesday,” source said.