Telangana minister Uttam Reddy calls Kaleshwaram project "India's biggest man-made financial disaster"

Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], September 1 (ANI): Telangana's Irrigation and Civil Supplies Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy told the Legislative Assembly that the collapse of the Medigadda barrage under the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) has left the state facing "the biggest man-made and financial disaster in independent India."
He said that key civil-works assets have remained unusable for nearly two years, and the state is saddled with costs that he said were avoidable and unsupported by sound engineering or administrative discipline.
Reddy, on Sunday, opened the debate on the Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose Commission of Inquiry report. He alleged that decisions of the previous TRS (now BRS) government ignored expert warnings, altered designs without approvals, and led to a rapid collapse of core structures that had been projected as a flagship of Telangana's irrigation push.
Reddy said six piers of Block-7 of the Medigadda barrage sank on 21 October 2023, and an FIR was filed the next day at Mahadevpur Police Station. He described Medigadda as the "heart" of Kaleshwaram, integral to the lifting chain with Annaram and Sundilla, and stated that together the three barrages and their pump houses cost about Rs 21,000 crore, which has yielded no utility since the failure, rendering the system defunct for 20 months.

Citing the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA), which inspected the site on 24 October 2023, he said experts attributed the distress to poor planning and design, weak foundations and lack of quality control, warned that other blocks faced similar risk, and advised that storing water in the present condition would worsen damage; the Authority's assessment, he said, concluded that the barrage was useless unless fully rehabilitated.
The Minister located the failure in a larger policy pivot away from the earlier Dr B.R. Ambedkar Pranahita-Chevella project. He recalled that the Congress government launched Pranahita-Chevella in 2009 with Central Water Commission processing under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme, and that interstate arrangements with Maharashtra on barrage levels and submergence studies were underway through an interstate board process supported by the Central Water and Power Research Station, Pune.
He alleged that key choices preceded technical due diligence. He stated that WAPCOS was engaged to prepare the DPR, but that the decision to build a barrage at Medigadda had effectively been made even before the study was scrutinised, and that on the very day WAPCOS submitted the DPR.
According to the statement, he said that the scheme was marketed on the assurance of lifting 195 TMC a year and irrigating 34 lakh acres while stabilising an additional 18 lakh acres, but from the inauguration in 2019 to the collapse in 2023, the total water lifted was 162 TMC in five years.
Presenting the accountability track, Uttam Kumar Reddy said the current government appointed a Judicial Commission of Inquiry in March 2024 under Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose, former judge of the Supreme Court and India's first Lokpal, to examine alleged negligence, irregularities and lacunae in planning, design and construction of Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla, as well as contracting, quality control, and operation and maintenance lapses that led to structural damage.
He said the Commission's findings were categorical on multiple counts: wrong planning or no planning with respect to estimates and administrative approvals; calling and awarding of contracts before the CWC approved the DPR; defects in designs and drawings; absence of scope to check and ensure quality control during execution; premature completion certificates and premature release of bank guarantees; unjustified revised estimates; and unjustified extensions of time. (ANI)