The Polavaram project on Godavari river, considered to be the lifeline of Andhra Pradesh, appears to be an unending saga, as there are no indications of the project to be completed in the near future.
On Monday, Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu indicated that it might take another four years to complete the Polavaram project, because precious five years’ time was lost during the previous Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy regime.
Naidu reviewed the status of the Polavaram project works during his visit to the site at Ramayyapet village of Polavaram block in Eluru district in the afternoon.
Senior officials of the irrigation department explained to him the progress achieved in the project and the works to be completed in the coming days.
Naidu claimed that 72 percent of the project's work had been completed during the earlier TDP regime between 2014 and 2019, when it was granted national status.
The spillway of the project was built with a design to discharge 15 lakh cusecs of water. The diaphragm wall was built at a cost of Rs 480 crore and the upper and lower coffer dams were also under construction, he said.
But soon after Jagan assumed charge in May 2019, he changed the contractors and even workers in the name of reverse tendering, which had disrupted progress. Even the head-works had come to a standstill due to replacement of the contractor, he said.
“As a result, the diaphragm wall suffered 35% damage in the 2020 floods, due to non-completion of coffer dam. Now, officials say it requires Rs 446 crore to repair the diaphragm wall and there is no guarantee that it would withstand floods, as there are seepages in coffer dam. If we have to built another diaphragm wall parallelly, we need to spend Rs 990 crore,” the chief minister said.
He said had the contractor not been changed and the works were continued, the Polavaram project would have been completed by 2020 itself.
“Now, the officials say it might take another four years for the completion, provided funds are spent on time. All this happened because of the irresponsible attitude of the Jagan government,” Naidu said.