Kishan Reddy Slams Telangana Government For Medigadda Bridge Collapse

Telangana BJP president and union minister G Kishan Reddy today alleged that the State government was obstructing political leaders and engineers from visiting the site where the Lakshmi barrage pillars had collapsed.

Speaking with the media at the party's State headquarters today, Reddy said that the pillars of the Lakshmi barrage of the Kaleshwaram project, which was widely publicised by the State government, had gotten damaged without any reason.

He also said that there had been no response from the government so far even after the collapse of a structure in the Rs 1.5 lakh crore project.

He said that engineers had long been suspicious of the project, which was constructed at a cost of thousands of crores of rupees, and added that their suspicions were turning into realities with the collapse of parts of the project.

He said that the project estimates had been increased drastically by the BRS government to loot public money, and despite that, within just three years of its launch a part of the project had collapsed. He also recalled that when there was a flood in the Godavari river last year pumphouses of the project were submerged and there was a loss of thousands of crores of rupees due to the electric motors getting immersed in water.

He asked KCR, who he said had promised that 400 TMC of water would be lifted from the project every year, to reveal the figures of the total quantity of water lifted by the State government. He claimed that in the last five years only 150 TMC of water had been lifted from the project.

He said that there was an urgent need for a thorough investigation into the safety of the project by the State government. "We demand that the State government immediately call the Dam Safety Authority and take steps to look into the project," he said.

He said that BJP leader Etala Rajender was going to inspect the collapsed bridge on Sunday.