Vigilance Probe Reveals Rs 3,200 Crore Loss In Medigada: Congress

G Niranjan, TPCC senior vice-president, today said that the vigilance inquiry on the Medigadda barrage episode had come to the conclusion that about Rs 3,200 crore had been wasted out of a total of Rs 3,625.82 crore spent on the barrage.

32 officers were held responsible by the report, he added.

Speaking to media persons at Gandhi Bhavan, Niranjan said that about Rs 500 crore were required for repairs to the barrage now. Though the previous State government kept saying that the construction company would bear that, the company refused to on the grounds that defect liability period of two years was over in 2021 itself, he said.

He said that the Medigadda episode had come to light on October 21, 2023, and that the previous government had taken it callously and said that only a small crack had been found in one of the piers. Neither the CM K Chandrashekar Rao nor K T Rama Rao nor Harish Rao even visited the site, he added.

The new Congress government ordered a vigilance inquiry on January 7, and the inquiry said that the effect was not confined to one block but extended to more, he said. The barrage was built in eight blocks with 87 piers, and experts were saying that 11 piers now needed to be removed - the 18th, 19th and 20th piers in the 7th block were damaged, and 11 other piers were in a dangerous position according to the experts, Niranjan said.

He added that the inquiry also said that the construction committee itself made a new design and took the approval of the CDO (Chief Designing Officer) forcibly. The construction was thus not done in accordance with the original design. The issue came out within one year of the completion of the barrage in 2019, but repair works were not taken up, and that blew up into the present damage, Niranjan said.

The KCR government tried to hush up the whole issue, and a complaint was made to be filed by the concerned engineer in the Bhupalpally police station that this had happened due to extremist activity. But the concerned police here could not dare to do so as the election code was prevailing, and ultimately ruled out any extremist angle in it.

Niranjan urged the State government to declare the actual extent of the damage to the barrage, and whether it was usable or not. "We also demand that no officer or politicians responsible for the grave lapses be spared," he added.