Minister for Water Resources P. Anil Kumar has said that the cash-strapped State will benefit by saving ₹4,500 crore, thanks to the government’s decision to go for reverse tenders.
Addressing the media here after inspecting the water flow in the Penna barrage, Mr. Kumar said that more than ₹900 crore had already been saved by calling for reverse tenders for projects such as Polavaram and Veligonda.
Transparency
While ₹850 crore could be saved in the Polavaram project, ₹62.10 crore was the saving made in drilling tunnel-2 of the Veligonda project, he said. The department was the first to adopt the reverse tendering process to ensure transparency, the Minister explained.
Instead of appreciating the government for saving the taxpayers’ money, the TDP was making a hue and cry for cancelling tenders finalised during its regime at an inflated cost, he observed.
‘Reservoirs full’
After a long gap, the major reservoirs in the State, which included those in the Godavari, the Krishna and the Penna basins, had received copious inflows, he said.
The State had a storage of 818.46 tmcft against the gross capacity of 982.35 tmcft, giving a fillip to the farm operations across the State, official sources said.
With an inflow of 9,825 cusecs, the storage in the Somasila reservoir stood at 73.28 tmcft against the FRL of 78 tmcft and the storage in the Kandaleru went up to 28.67 tmcft following an inflow of 10,125 cusecs.
