: The YSR Congress has charged the Telugu Desam Party-led State government with ignoring the irrigation sector and pursuing commercial agenda.
The upper riparian States were constructing projects, but the government remained a mute spectator to the development. The YSRC had therefore decided to launch the save Krishna basin agitation to highlight the failure of the TDP government in protecting the interests of the State.
Accusing the government of behaving irresponsibly, YSRC MLA B. Rajendranath Reddy said this could result in vast stretches of land turning into desert in the coming days. YSRC president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy would sit on a three-day fast in Kurnool from May 16 to highlight the government’s failures on the irrigation front.
He recalled how the upper riparian States like Karnataka pursued their irrigation agenda aggressively and built numerous medium and major projects across the Krishna during the previous tenure of N. Chandrababu Naidu as the Chief Minister of the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh. The then TDP government had, in fact, allowed things to go in favour of Karnataka.
Telangana projects
“History is repeating. Mr. Naidu is maintaining stoic silence at a time when the Telangana government is going ahead with the Palamur- Ranga Reddy and Dindi projects aimed at drawing 120 tmcft from Srisailam backwaters through lift irrigation,” he said.
The four districts of Rayalaseema and Nellore and Prakasam would be deprived of water if the TDP did not wake up in time.
At a time when the political parties in other States were joining hands in the interests of the people, the situation was different in Andhra Pradesh where the TDP had turned governance into a commercial enterprise. This was evident from the fact that the TDP government did not allow the Central government to execute the Polavaram project and had instead taken up Pattiseema in the lure of kickbacks.
“Pattiseema has become a commercial enterprise and the capital city has turned into a marketing venture while the ruling party is going ahead with luring MLAs of the main Opposition,” he said.
“Upper riparian States’ action in constructing irrigation projects is going unchallenged”
