HYDERABAD: TRS chief K Chandrasekhara Rao has urged chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to cancel the bids filed for the Polavaram irrigation project. In a letter to the chief minister on Sunday, Rao wanted the project work be kept on hold till the Supreme Court adjudicates in the matter. Asserting that he was opposed to the project in its present form, he alleged that the government had not heeded any advice from any quarter and completed the canal work after spending `3,500 core and opened the bids for spillway work worth `4,714 crore. He suggested to the chief minister to constitute a committee comprising retired chief engineer T Hanumanta Rao, retired engineer- in-chief M Dharma Rao and environmentalists, economists, sociologists and engineers to formulate a new design for the project. He said he had been opposed to the project since it was being built violation of all laws— Environment Act, 1986; Forest Act, 1980; PESA Act, 1996 and the Bachawat Award.He said he was deeply concerned that the project, in its present form, would submerge 206 villages in Telangana (Khammam) and 23 in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, affecting 9,200 acres of forest land and 1.93 lakh people. In order to minimise the submergence, he said he had requested the government to look for alternatives in lieu of the present project, which is mandatory as per the Environment Protection Act, 1986.He recalled that such an alternative was chosen in case of the Heran reservoir in Gujarat at the behest of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi. The TRS leader said he had approached UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in 2005 for her intervention since his pleas for a change in the design fell on deaf ears in the state.At her behest, a tripartite meeting was held at AP Bhavan in Delhi on July 22, 2005 where Digvijay Singh, the then AICC leader in charge of AP; YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the then chief minister; and he himself attended and adopted a resolution that an alternative should be found to reduce submersion of villages. Though they had passed a resolution, Rao went on, the government made a mockery of it by constituting a committee and compelled it to say that the project in the present form would be the answer.Then he had to approach the centre empowered committee, High Court and Supreme Court and the matter was now awaiting adjudication by the Supreme Court.He said the clearances that the state obtained were ad hoc in nature and were subject to the final orders to be passed by the Supreme Court.
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