Once touted as its biggest achievement, the multi-crore Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) is now turning out to be a major embarrassment for the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which ruled Telangana for ten years since the state's formation in 2004.
The new Congress government has been training its guns on the previous BRS regime for the alleged irregularities and corruption in the implementation of irrigation projects, particularly the flagship Kaleshwaram project.
Billed as the brainchild of former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the Rs 80,000 crore project, inaugurated in 2019, was projected as the world’s biggest lift irrigation scheme.
But, more and more skeletons are now tumbling out of the BRS cupboard, exposing how the project has been a disaster. The latest is the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) which nails the lies perpetrated by the previous regime.
The Kaleshwaram project was a rushed affair, with the then government and its irrigation department cutting corners, inflating costs, skipping comprehensive plans for sourcing funds, and flouting other norms, the CAG report said. Several components of the project were approved and handed to contractors even before detailed project reports (DPR) were finalised, the report, tabled in the Assembly, said.
The detailed findings on various aspects of KLIS are expected to further fuel charges that the former BRS government either neglected or chose to ignore many deficiencies in the project design and its execution.
Nearly each of the 218 pages of the report reads like an indictment of the BRS government. The CAG report, which took into consideration the project execution till 2022, said the final cost of Kaleshwaram will likely touch Rs 1,47,427.41 crore, against the original cost of Rs 81,911.01 crore, as projected to the Central Water Commission.
The CAG made it clear that the project was a financial disaster, with a return of just 52 paise for every rupee spent on it. This “clearly indicates that the project was ab-initio (from the beginning), economically unviable.”
It further said that there was no comprehensive plan for the sources of funds for “a project of this scale, which will further have a long-term impact on the finances of the state.” This, the CAG said, “is an indication of improper planning and ad-hocism.”
The BRS government, despite the high project cost, did not accord administrative approval for the entire project but instead, kept issuing separate administrative approvals for individual works on an ad-hoc basis, in violation of the provisions of the State Financial Code.
Additionally, the government heavily relied on off-budget borrowings for the project, despite telling the Central Water Commission in August 2016 that it would provide Rs 80,500 crore for the project, despite already having floated the Kaleshwaram Irrigation Project Corporation Limited for raising off-budget loans.
“The proposal to raise market loans was not informed to the CWC,” the CAG report said.
The annual repayment amounts, beginning this year, will range from Rs 14,462.15 crore which will gradually come down to Rs 712.44 crore in 2035-36, the CAG said.
The CAG report also took note of design deviations and flaws in the construction of the Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages and held the irrigation department squarely responsible for the current plight of the barrages. Even worse for the BRS, which was in power when the project was built and put to work, the CAG said it received unsatisfactory replies from the then government to several queries, including just how much the project contributed to the Mission Bhagiratha drinking water scheme.
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