A pillar of the Medigadda bridge, also known as Lakshmi barrage, of the prestigious Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) sank on Saturday, October 21. The bridge located in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district of Telangana suddenly started caving in on Saturday night, bringing the traffic movement to a halt in the Telangana to Maharashtra stretch.
According to reports, the 1.6 km long Lakshmi barrage has 87 pillars, of which pillar number 19 suffered damage and pillar numbers 20 and 21 had some cracks. The police halted heavy vehicle movement on the barrage. KLIP officials opened all the 46 gates of the barrage and discharged around 10.7 TMC of water.
A Times of India report stated that a team of engineering officers who were present at the site said that there was a loud noise before the bridge sank, which raises the suspicion that it might have been a sabotage. Based on a complaint filed by the Telangana government, Mahadevpur police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) and a probe is on. L & T, which built the barrage, is also maintaining it currently. The time for repair would be decided based on the extent of the damage caused.
Meanwhile, Telangana Congress has demanded an inquiry by a sitting judge into the sinking of the Medigadda barrage. Alleging that the state government was trying to hush-up the incident by stopping media persons and opposition leaders going for inspection, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president A Revanth Reddy urged Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan to order an inquiry.
He told reporters in Delhi that poor quality of the construction work led to the incident and demanded that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who claims to have re-designed the project, should own up the responsibility. Revanth Reddy said the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) should also probe into the allegations of corruption in the Kaleshwaram project. He alleged that the corrupt practices were exposed with the sinking of pillars of the mega project constructed at a cost of Rs 1.20 lakh crore. He also added that a delegation of the Congress would also join to see and analyze the damage.