State to write to Centre for quick release of funds for Polavaram

At the weekly Polavaram virtual review meeting on Monday, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu asked Water Resources Secretary Shashi Bhushan Kumar to write to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari to arrange for expeditious release of funds for the Polavaram project.

The officials told Mr. Naidu that the Centre had to release ₹2,886.85 crore.

CM updated on progress

While ₹13,364 crore was spent till March 2018, the State government spent ₹5,135 crore after the irrigation project was declared a national project. The Centre released ₹8,229.11 crore, the officials told Mr. Naidu.

The Chief Minister was then updated on the progress of the project.

The officials said work had already begun on 38 of the 45 colonies for 16,687 families affected by the project.

While good progress had been made in the construction of the diaphragm wall and jet grouting, the progress in excavation and concrete work continued to be tardy, they said.

Only 795.39 lakh CuM of the 1,115.59 lakh CuM target for excavation work could be achieved. While the new contractor Navayuga was able to achieve 765.87 CuM of the target 984.59 lakh CuM, the previous contractor Transtroy was able to achieve 29.52 lakh CuM of the target of 131 lakh CuM.

While 35.14 lakh CuM of concrete work was pending, only 5.14 lakh CuM could be achieved.