The Polavaram multi-purpose irrigation project under progress on the Godavari river for the last 15 years is like an umbilical cord that connects former Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, late YS Rajasekhar Reddy, and his son, AP’s current CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. As the heir apparent, it’s obviously incumbent upon Jagan to realise his father’s dream.
In a bid to take the task forward, Jagan conducted a field visit to the dam site a few days back and expressed his commitment that farmers in the Godavari and Krishna deltas would receive the river water through the dam at the onset of the kharif season in 2021. Well, can he live up to his promise? There appear to be a couple of roadblocks to Jagan’s deadline – the NDA government’s denial of the state government’s plea to fund the Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) package running into more than Rs 30,000 cr; and the Jagan government’s decision to retender the project.
The irrigation project was declared a national project in line with the commitment expressed in the Bifurcation Act, 2014, under which the Centre shall bear 90% of the project cost. When the previous TDP government led by Chandrababu Naidu made a strong case for inclusion of R&R package in the project cost, the NDA government turned down the plea.
Replying to a question on who shall bear the cost of non-irrigation components of the project such as R&R, Union Minister of Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat stated in Parliament in July 2019, “The responsibility of rehabilitation and resettlement of the families displaced by the project rests with the state government only”.
In 2017 the Central Water Commission (CWC) approved the revised cost estimates of the non-irrigation components of the project such as R&R, land, R&R colonies, land to land compensation and rehabilitation under the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LAAR) Act, 2013 up to a staggering Rs 34,000 cr. The Centre cleared the Naidu government’s proposal, pegging the cost for the whole project at Rs 53,319 cr. This meant an unbearable burden on the truncated state, which has been left with empty coffers after the bifurcation.
Jagan’s reverse tendering
The Polavaram Project Authority (PPA), an arm of the Union Ministry of Water Resources, in its report submitted to the Centre soon after Jagan’s YSRCP came to power in 2019 asserted that the decision of the state government to terminate the contract of the present firm Navayuga Engineering Company Limited (NECL) and go in for fresh tenders would only result in huge expenditure, rather than bringing down the project cost.
Regardless of the Centre’s caution, Jagan, smelling a financial fraud in the contract awarded by his rival Naidu, decided to foreclose the contract and reward the project works to Mega Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL). This was followed by an assurance from Irrigation Minister P Anil Kumar Yadav that there would not be any time or cost overrun in view of change in the contracting agency.
But experts have a different take on the fate of the project.
T Lakshminarayana, an irrigation expert, says the Chief Minister is unlikely to complete the Polavaram project before his own deadline mainly because of his controversial reverse tendering. The dam failed to see much progress after replacing NECL with MEIL some four months ago, he adds.
Transtrai, a contracting agency belonging to then Congress MP Rayapati Sambasiva Rao, got the bidding for the Polavaram project in 2013 at the fag end of the Congress regime in undivided Andhra Pradesh. But Naidu, after coming to power in 2014, changed the agency favouring NECL.
YSR’s brainchild
The Polavaram project was a promise made by Rajasekhar Reddy, popularly known as YSR, during his gruelling foot march that went viral and saw the downfall of the Naidu government and YSR emerging victorious in the 2004 elections. However, uncertainty loomed over the fate of the project during the Congress rule after YSR was killed in a chopper crash in 2009.
Successive Congress CMs put the Polavaram project on the backburner to pacify K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, who was then heading the separate statehood movement. KCR chose to whip up regional sentiment by opposing the project as it has been designed to harness the Godavari river water to benefit the Andhra region allegedly at the expense of the riparian rights of his Telangana. Under pressure from his Telangana party colleagues, Naidu too joined hands with KCR.
The TDP leader changed his stance after the state bifurcation; the Polavaram project figured on the top of Naidu’s agenda during his tenure (2014-19). He even talked about the ambitious linking of the Godavari-Krishna-Penna rivers, beginning with the Polavaram project. He vowed to complete the project by 2019 but could not accomplish it for a variety of reasons.
CPI(M) former MP Midiyam Babu Rao, a tribal himself, tells TNM that it was impossible to commission the project without implementing the R&R package covering all the project victims in the 227 submergence villages. He says that the victims from only 23 villages located in and around the dam site have been covered under the rehabilitation and resettlement package so far. The government has spent only 20% of the funds under the R&R package for project victims.
The project, which was named after slain Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by the YSR government and had its nomenclature changed to Polavaram during the successive TDP regime, has been designed to bring 1.3 lakh acres under irrigation. Transfer of 80 tmc of Godavari water to the Krishna river has also been proposed, besides stabilising the existing 13 lakh acres in the Krishna and the Godavari delta regions.
Gali Nagaraja is a freelance journalist who writes on the two Telugu states.
Views expressed are the author’s own.