Three crevices in the rocky bed of the pool at the foot of the first branch of Kuntala waterfalls in Adilabad district make the difference between heaven and hell for the unsuspecting picnickers.
A majority of the 48 persons, who lost their lives at the scenic place since 1989, including Hyderabad techie Inzamam-ul-Haq on January 27, had drowned in those fissures.
The lives of these majority of ill-fated persons could have been saved had the Government applied simple logic and closed the openings in the rocky bed in the pool. Strange enough, the eyes of the Government remain closed even now and there is no evident effort to make the place safe. Kuntala waterfalls is the largest of such wonders of nature in Telangana with the height of the fall being about 140 ft and a width of over 350 ft. It is located in Neredigonda mandal, about 12 km inside the forest from the mandal headquarters and on an average about 3,000 tourists per day visit the place during monsoon and early winter every year. So far, 136 persons have perished at the spot as per the record maintained by the police in the district and 48 of them lost their lives since the formation of Neredigonda police station in 1989. “All the efforts of the Government made since the turn of the century, which have curiously not materialised so far, are concentrated only towards improving the place as a tourist spot. Its plans for making the picturesque spot safer were limited to construction of restrictive structures based on the opinion of ‘experts’, who never in their life visited the waterfall,” blurted out an angry Namrata Reddy, a regular picnicker and also a techie working in an IT company in Madhapur, Hyderabad. Officials are tight-lipped about the way the issue of safety at Kuntala is being dealt. “It definitely needs attention at least now,” was the only reply The Hindu could elicit from an official that too on condition of anonymity. “At regular intervals, public representatives and officials stage ‘tamashas’ at the place. They pretend as if they are concerned about the safety of the visitors and serious enough to develop the place,” a villager from Kuntala pointed out. The latest in the alleged tamasha was a visit to the exotic place by a team led by none other than Forest Minister Jogu Ramanna on January 13 and Telangana Principal Chief Conservator of Forests P.K. Jha.
The VIPs discussed every aspect, including safety, needed for the spot to be developed as a tourist centre, except the fact of filling up the dangerous crevices in the pool.
