BRS sends legal notice to Telugu daily over claims of water diversion to KCR’s farmhouse

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has sent a legal notice to the Telugu newspaper Velugu, owned by Congress Minister Gaddam Vivek Venkatswamy, over a story alleging that water from the Kondapochamma Sagar Reservoir has been diverted to former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s farmhouse in Erravalli village of Siddipet district. 

Accusing Velugu of publishing a false story against KCR, the BRS legal cell has demanded an unconditional apology to be carried on the front page, warning that the newspaper’s editor and management would otherwise face a defamation suit. 

The report published in Velugu on October 17 included images of a three-acre well filled with water allegedly part of KCR’s farmhouse. It also showed satellite images of a water body called Panduranga Cheruvu (lake) near the farmhouse spread over 58 acres, alleging that it was completely dry in 2017 but had been filled up with water by 2021 from the Kondapochamma Sagar reservoir, which is part of the Kaleshwaram irrigation project. 

The report claimed that residents said KCR had the lake dug up around the same time that the reservoir was being built.

Velugu alleged that instead of meeting farmers’ irrigation needs, the Kondapochamma Sagar reservoir water was diverted to the lake and from there into a well on the farmhouse premises, all using public funds. 

Congress MP and the party’s media committee chairperson Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy also made the same allegations at a press meet on October 17, while refuting recent allegations made by a construction firm about irregularities in evaluating tenders for the Hyderabad Growth Corridor Limited’s (HGCL) Radial Road-2 project under the Revanth Reddy government. 

Earlier in September, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy had alleged in the Assembly that KCR’s farmhouse in Erravelli was spread over more than 700 acres, including 388 acres of government land meant to be assigned to Dalit families for livelihood. He said the government would inquire into the land and planned to distribute the land among 800 Dalit families.