KTR sees sabotage in Medigadda accident, asks government to shed its ego to pump water out of Medigadda

Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) incumbent president KT Rama Rao suspects a conspiracy in the Medigadda Barrage incident and fears that another conspiracy will soon emerge just to defame BRS chairman K. Chandrashekhar Rao and his ten-year rule.

“The incident took place just a month before the elections and given the mood of this government which is aiming to portray the Kashawaram project as a failure, another act of sabotage cannot be ruled out,” he said in an informal discussion with reporters in Parliament on Saturday.

KTR said that currently Medigadda dam is experiencing floods of 10 lakh cubic feet per second but no danger is evident. Similarly, the project could withstand floods of 28 lakh cubic feet per second in 2020. “I suspect that a foreign body is playing a role in the damage seen at Medigadda dam just before the elections,” he argued.

No choice but to lift water

The former IT minister said the ego of the ruling party leaders and their efforts to neutralise all the benefits of the Kaleshwaram project to defame KCR prevented the government from pumping water from the Kannepally pump house. He urged the government not to penalise the state and farmers to satisfy the ego of a few persons.

He said there was no need to store water at Medigadda to pump it from the pump house which can pump 40,000 cubic feet of water daily. Instead of wasting the water, the government should put aside its ego and pump water from the Kannepally pump house to fill Sripada Yellampalli, Mid Manair and from there all other projects including filling tanks in the villages along the route. “Can this government not afford to pay the electricity bills to irrigate 35 lakh acres under the Kaleshwaram project and thereby bring happiness to the faces of lakhs of farmers?” he asked.

He welcomed the government’s decision to pump water from the Yellammpalli project, but said that the government cannot pump more than 2 TMC ft out of the 16 TMC ft as 14 TMC ft of water has to be stored there at any cost to supply drinking water to Hyderabad. Yellampalli is currently not receiving any inflow from the Kadem project and can be filled only by pumping water from the Kannepally pump house.