KCR monitoring Water Grid project closely

Hyderabad:  We already told you about the Telangana Government’s most ambitious water grid project. Touted as world’s longest water grid o...

Hyderabad: We already told you about the Telangana Government’s most ambitious water grid project. Touted as world’s longest water grid of 1.26 lakh kilometers, meant to provide safe drinking water in the state has landed itself in controversy and is mired in graft allegations.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has decided to lift water from the Srisailam dam to Nalgonda district, precluding the nearest water source Nagarjunasagar dam, featuring in earlier project design, for his pet Telangana water grid scheme.

Frequent changes in project design in the last one month have fuelled allegations that it is being done at the behest of some private pipe manufacturing companies.

The project expenditure is expected to increase manifold as a result, with more pipes to be laid and more lands acquired.

The government has decided to spend Rs 25, 000 crore on the project and pipe manufacturing firms are keen on making moolah out of it.

Chief Minister himself is monitoring the entire scheme right from the start and neither his Cabinet colleagues nor officials in the panchayat raj department have dared to comment on this issue, let alone bring to his notice, the implications of “hasty decisions.”