Govt. taking Veeranam scheme to court?

By V.Jayanth

CHENNAI, JUNE 9. Thirtyone years after it was cleared and a full 25 years after a Commission of Inquiry went into the allegations of corruption and malpractice, the Veeranam water supply scheme is again in the news.

Not that there is any water being brought to a parched Chennai, but the AIADMK Government, now back in power, wants to dust the shelf and pull out the Sarkaria Commission report to see if any prosecution can be launched against the former Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi.

The Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalitha, told the State legislature that there could be no fresh debate in the House on the Veeranam scheme, but that the DMK could prepare to face it in courts. Her Government would try to push for reviving the case and taking it to its logical conclusion. But the Chief Minister also noted that a lot will depend on the Centre and the federal investigating agency, CBI, to prosecute the accused in the case.

For an idea of what the Veeranam case was all about and what the Sarkaria Commission actually said at the conclusion of its sittings, the dusty and now ``fragile'' pages of the Commission's report provide the background.

The scheme itself, though symbolically cleared by the late C.N. Annadurai and launched during his brief tenure as Chief Minister, was revised and re-launched in 1970 when Mr. Karunanidhi was Chief Minister.

The expulsion of the matinee idol turned politician, late M.G. Ramachandran, from the DMK in 1972 stirred a hornet's nest and proved to be the undoing for the DMK and its Government. Apart from mobilising the people, MGR, as he was known, befriended the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and submitted a memorandum of corruption charges against his political adversary.

Indira Gandhi went on to dismiss the Karunanidhi Government, imposed Emergency and appointed the Sarkaria Commission to look into the allegations - one of them relating to the Veeranam scheme.

The DMK Government cleared the project to augment water supply to Madras (now Chennai) by 40 million gallons per day from the Veeranam tank. The estimated cost was Rs. 21.30 crores. MGR's charge was that all norms and procedures were thrown to the winds to accept the tender of Messrs Sathyanarayana Brothers and the Government even bypassed the Chief Secretary to get the Additional Chief Secretary to grant the final approval. MGR alleged that money changed hands and the officials were forced to approve the particular tender, bending over backwards.

A major problem was that this was the largest contract in the post-independence era till then and the use of pre- stressed concrete pipes of such large dimensions over such a distance was still untested in the country. The last straw was that Sathyanarayana himself committed suicide, unable to stand the tension in executing the project.

While clearing the project, the Central Public Health Engineering Organisation wrote: ``With regard to pre-stressed concrete pipes, it may be mentioned that large diameter pipes as required for the Madras Water Supply project have not been manufactured or tested in India so far. Such pipes are only to be entrusted to competent international firms with considerable experience of this class of work as the technique of manufacture of pre-stressed concrete pipes and the high degree of mechanisation and quality control essential for these pipes are not to be entrusted with any ordinary firm.''

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