The State government has swung into action without wasting much time for inquiring into the alleged irregularities in the execution of Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) following the caving-in of some piers of the Medigadda Barrage of the project and other damages such as seepage and cracks noticed in the two upstream barrages — Annaram and Sundilla.
Several teams of officials of the Vigilance and Enforcement department raided the offices of the Irrigation department from Engineer-in-Chief (ENC) to Executive Engineer (EE) level at about 10 locations on Tuesday. According to highly placed sources, the V&E teams conducted searches in KLIP offices at Mahadevpur, Karimnagar, Warangal, Ramagundam and Hyderabad.
According to highly-placed sources, the teams had seized files, documents and hard disks of computers so that they could not be tampered with. The focus of searches was to find out irregularities both in the technical (engineering) and financial aspects. The documents of projects works from the pre-bid stage were taken for investigation.
The V&E authorities are planning to take the assistance of experts from the JNTU-H in the matter of engineering aspects and chartered accountants in case of financial aspects. It is understood that the State government has directed the V&E Department to inquire into the irregularities before instituting a judicial probe following the Irrigation department authorities’ alleged reluctance to share the details even at the review meetings conducted at the Minister-level.
It is learnt that the V&E inquiry has been instituted first sensing the possibility of tampering with documents/records by at least some of the irrigation engineers/officials to cover up their mistakes, if any, in the execution of projects during the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government period.
The Congress party has been alleging large-scale irregularities and corruption in the execution of irrigation projects, particularly KLIP, from the beginning and Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy announced about instituting a judicial probe into the irregularities during the first session of the Legislature itself last month.
He made the announcement in the Legislative Council and it was reiterated later by Deputy Chief Minister M. Bhatti Vikramarka and Minister for Irrigation N. Uttam Kumar Reddy. Later in the day, Mr. Uttam Reddy stated that the State government had given directions for a vigilance inquiry into the KLIP irregularities and that the government had already requested the Chief Justice of the High Court for allotment of a judge for inquiring into the irregularities.
