Accusing the Centre of meting out a raw deal to Andhra Pradesh, Congress State vice-president N. Tulasi Reddy on Friday maintained that with the Polavaram project progressing at a snail’s pace, it was highly impossible to complete it even by 2019, leave alone 2018.
Contending that the Centre was insincere in implementing the State Reorganisation Act, he said the Congress would go to the people during the next elections to complete the Polavaram project, the brainchild of the party, on a war-footing and fulfil all the promises made to ‘Navyandhra’ in toto.
Making a presentation to the media here on the ₹54,113 crore project, he said, “While the project’s physical progress is 51%, the financial progress is only 32%.” Only about ₹7,431 crore had been spent on the project in the last over three years as against ₹5,136 crore spent during the erstwhile Congress regime, he said, adding that the Centre was yet to reimburse ₹2,400 crore spent by the State.
He wondered how many more years would be required by the BJP-TDP combine to mobilise another ₹41,546 crore as per the estimates prepared in 2014 for completion of the prestigious project.
Cost overruns
According to an estimate, the project, the lifeline of the agrarian State, had suffered cost overruns to the tune of over ₹20,000 crore between 2014 and 2018, he said, and asked who would bear the additional cost.
The Centre should take full responsibility for completion of the national project without compromising on quality after rehabilitating the displaced people, he said, ahead of the party’s padayatra from Dowleswaram barrage in East Godavari to Polavaram from January 7.
The State government had frittered away the scarce financial resources on unnecessary Pattiseema and Purushottapatnam lift irrigation schemes for the sake of kickbacks, he alleged.
Opining that the situation was conducive for the return of the Congress to power at the Centre in 2019 due to the omissions and commissions of the NDA, he said the next round of Assembly elections in eight States during the year would be a game-changer.
