Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has accused the TRS government of resorting to “colossal” corrupt practices in the irrigation projects in the last six years and claimed it has reached its peak by floating tenders to the tune of ₹ 24,096 crore during the lockdown.
In a memorandum submitted to Governor Tamilisai Soundarajan on Saturday, State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, city president N. Ramchander Rao and other leaders said that while the BJP was for construction of projects it is against the “immense corruption taking place in the name of construction of projects”. They urged her to order an inquiry into the corrupt practices of “KCR and his government” so the “guilty can be punished”.
They specifically listed the latest tenders of ₹19,862 crore for Kaleshwaram project and ₹4,234 crore for Sitarama lift irrigation were done in a hurry despite the lockdown constraints and no proper quotations were obtained leading to increased cost estimates.
Tracing the projects’ construction from the time TRS had come to power, the party charged that in the name of redesigning existing projects, the government had escalated the cost to about ₹2.5 lakh crore with costs of various components highly escalated and works handed over to “favoured firms”.
For most projects, no global tenders were called and no cost benefit ratio or techno-economic options for these were worked out as per laid out norms. The expertise of public sector units like BHEL and others were not taken for various components like motors, gates and pumps in these projects whereas the PSUs were given works at 1/10th of the cost and did a wonderful job in the previous works.
The party leaders informed the Governor that the contract agencies which were awarded the works are “not experts” in the manufacturing or fixing of gates, motors and pumps like the PSUs. The costing of various such components were not calculated as per industry standard guidelines, the designs and associated costs were changed arbitrarily while costing and calculations were never made public.
They alleged that key works of Yellampalli barrage were handed over on a nomination basis without even calling for a tender in violation of the rules and regulations. Listing out other ‘scandals’ in the irrigation projects redesign, the BJP accused the TRS government of pushing TS into a debt trap with every year ₹40,000 crore going for payment of loans to commercial banks and this could rise to one lakh crore rupees by 2024, the memorandum added.
