political-war-of-words-over-ap-s-polavaram-project

The prestigious Polavaram multipurpose project considered the lifeline of Andhra Pradesh, is at the centre of a political war of words, with the Telugu Desam Party (TD) and YSR Congress blaming each other for the inordinate delay in completing the project.

 

The central government accorded national project status to Polavaram in tune with the assurances given at the time of the bifurcation of the combined AP ten years ago.

 

However, the mega project, being built across river Godavari to provide irrigation facility to over seven lakh acres of farmland in coastal Andhra besides producing 960 MW power, has been bogged by delays and political obstacles.

 

Releasing a white paper on the project at a press conference in Vijayawada on Saturday, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, whose TDP stormed to power in the recent elections, alleged that the project was pushed into deep uncertainty because of the omissions and commissions of the previous YSRCP government.

 

"Due to inefficient planning and unnecessary changes in the executing agency, the project was rescheduled to be completed by June 2021. Later, the completion schedule was extended to June 2022 and then again to June 2023, putting the project under deep uncertainty,” Naidu said.

 

The Chief Minister also alleged that the previous regime had diverted more than Rs 3,385.58 crore released by the Centre towards the completion of works on Polavaram.

 

“The damage from the previous government's omissions and commissions stands at around Rs 4,900 crore. The first three units of the Polavaram Hydroelectric Project were scheduled to be completed by November 2021. The other six units were to be commissioned within six months thereafter. Non-commissioning of these units has resulted in the non-availability of cheap power to the state and has hence resulted in a loss of more than Rs 3000 crore up to May 2024. This loss will continue to increase as the project's completion is further delayed,” the white paper said.

 

He observed that had the executing agency not been changed and had the project planning been proper, the project would have been completed in time to release water for the Kharif crop in 2020.

 

Giving comparative expenditure figures, Naidu said an amount of Rs 11,762.47 crore was spent on the project between April 1, 2014 and May 31, 2019, when the TDP was in power. In contrast, between June 1, 2019, and May 31, 2024, the Jagan Mohan Reddy government had spent only Rs 4,996.53 crore, though the Central government had released an amount of Rs 8,382.11 crore to the state for completion of Polavaram project works.

 

“Thus, an amount of Rs 3,385.58 crore was diverted by the previous government for other schemes, instead of spending the same on the Polavaram project,” Naidu alleged.

 

He said the diversion of funds had badly affected the progress of the works of the project, including land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) of the project evacuees.

 

Payment of bills amounting to Rs 2,697 crore was still pending as of May 31, 2024. “All the executing agencies of the project have practically stopped work due to non-payment of their pending bills,” he said.

 

The chief minister said during the five-year regime of the YSRCP, the project works had come to a virtual standstill. Only 3.84% of civil works were executed, while no work was carried out on the right and left main canals and distributary network.

 

Giving a detailed explanation in the white paper on what went wrong with the Polavaram project in the last five years, Naidu said the decision of the Jagan government to pre-close the agreement signed with the original contractor and allotting the works to a new contractor in the name of reverse tendering led to the whole chaos.

 

“Within a day of taking over as the chief minister, Jagan directed stoppage of works of the Polavaram project by the executing agencies — Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd and Bekem Infra Projects Private Ltd — in June 2019 and ordered termination of their contracts,” he said.

 

The chief minister pointed out that the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) which was specially constituted by the Government of India to execute the project, had observed at its meeting on August 13, 2019, that there was no ground nor was there any necessity for pre-closure of the contracts and re-tendering of works, in view of satisfactory progress of works by the existing contractors.

 

“It also warned of additional financial liability on the state government and said the Centre cannot be made accountable for the cost overrun,” Naidu said.