The general impression among the people is that Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has the ability to get any hard task done in a short time.
He was credited with handling the recent devastating floods with aplomb by putting in his best efforts.
But for some strange reason, his government has been struggling to remove the three boats that were stuck up at the gates of Prakasam barrage on Krishna river at Vijayawada for the last two weeks.
Unless the boats are removed, the government cannot take up any repairs to the damaged portion of the Prakasam barrage. But it has become a challenging task for the irrigation department authorities to remove the boats from the barrage area.
The authorities, along with expert engineers from Bekem Infra company, have adopted three different methods to remove the boats – lift them using cranes, dismantle them and break them into pieces and pull the boats away using other heavy boats.
“The department authorities used all techniques like use of air balloons, heavy cranes and high-powered engines to pull the boats away from the barrage. Yet, they could not be moved an inch. Even cutting the boats into pieces could not be done under water due to heavy flows in the river,” sources said.
It is really surprising how the Naidu government could not find a solution to the problem, as he had the record of handling bigger crises in the past.
“The authorities could have used explosives to blow up the boats into pieces, but they are apprehensive that such an explosion would damage the barrage and its gates,” sources said.
Nevertheless, removal of boats is definitely a challenge for the Naidu government and if he cannot handle it at the earliest, it would be recorded as a failure of his administration.