HYDERABAD: The Congress has demanded a judicial probe into the submergence of the Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) pump house in the rising backwaters of Srisailam reservoir at Yellur village in Nagarkurnool district.
“The entire incident, resulting in loss of property worth thousands of crores of Rupees, was a man-made mistake. The submergence led to an explosion of pumps and the entire pump house was inundated within 20 minutes,” said Telangana Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy.
Fortunately, there was no loss of life but the tragedy was completely avoidable. An expert committee constituted by the TRS government had submitted a report on June 20, 2016 making several recommendations for the safety of the pump house. But the government ignored the recommendations and carried out underground works of Palamuru Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Project within 400-metre radius of KLIS pump house. The explosions for this project resulted in the submergence of the pump house inundating 10 out of its 14 floors, he alleged.
“Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao should accept the responsibility for the entire damage as he also holds the Irrigation portfolio. The damage is so enormous that it will badly affect the water supply to the farmers and drinking water supply to the villages. KCR must apologise to the people,” Uttam demanded.
He alleged that the irrigation projects in Telangana were taken up to mainly fill up the pockets of TRS leaders through commissions from the contractors. Even before people could forget the Srisailam Power House fire accident, the KLIS pump house got submerged due to the negligence of the TRS government,” he said.
TPCC working president Ponnam Prabhakar demanded the intervention of the Central Government to probe into the quality of works in the irrigation projects being constructed by the TRS government.
Box: Congress leaders including MP A Revanth Reddy, TPC vice-president Mallu Ravi and AICC secretary Sampath Kumar were arrested on their visit to the project site. Revanth Reddy also suffered injury to his leg when the Congress leaders tried to go ahead and police stopped them. Revanth Reddy and Uttam condemned the arrests stating why the government is worried if the opposition wants to visit the incident site.