: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday said the State government was prepared to spend Rs.3,000 crore to Rs. 4, 000 crore on the Polavaram project this year and observed that of the recent Rs. 1,800-crore expenditure on it, only Rs. 100 crore came from the Central government.
The State requires Rs.300 crore per month for doing earth-work, he said and hoped that the Central government would release its contribution to the national project as per pre-determined timelines.
Speaking after a virtual inspection of the works in progress at the Polavaram project on Thursday with the help of drones and other technologies, from the Command and Control Centre at Durga Ghat here, Mr. Naidu said the project deserved to be given due priority in compliance with the A.P Reorganisation Act to help the State in completing it by the year 2018. He interacted with engineers who were at the project site.
Virtual inspection mode
He instructed the officials to complete the construction of diaphragm wall by July 2017 and told them that he would review the pace of projects through the virtual inspection mode every month.
Mr. Naidu was told by the officials that of the 10.49 crore cubic metres of earthwork to be done, 4.2 crore cubic metres had been completed. Nearly 1.2 lakh cubic metres of soil is to be removed from the diaphragm wall area.
The L&T-Bauer joint venture has got 250-tonne capacity dumpers and 52 excavators and 203 dumpers were doing works at the project site.
Earlier, Mr. Naidu spoke to Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao and top officials of the department through remote video link.
