Hyderabad: Irrigation and civil supplies minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday accused the previous BRS govt of wasting public money while failing to create meaningful irrigation benefits for the farmers. Addressing a press conference along with chief minister A Revanth Reddy at the conclusion of a two-day inspection tour of irrigation projects in Mahabubnagar district, Uttam said the Congress govt had undertaken the exercise with a clear objective of accelerating all ongoing and proposed irrigation projects and removing bottlenecks that had delayed their completion for years.“One of the blunders committed by the previous BRS govt was shifting the water source for the Palamuru-Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme from Jurala to Srisailam. The decision severely damaged the interests of the erstwhile Mahabubnagar district and resulted in huge expenditure without creating even a single acre of assured ayacut,” he claimed.Stating that several irrigation schemes in Telangana remained incomplete despite a decade of BRS rule, he pointed out that projects such as Kalwakurthy, Nettempadu, Bhima and Koilsagar in Mahabubnagar district remained pending, while the SLBC tunnel in Nalgonda district witnessed little progress for years. Nearly Rs 8,000 crore were spent on the Sitarama project in Khammam district without delivering irrigation benefits on the expected scale. The Kaleshwaram project suffered structural failures during the tenure of the previous BRS govt itself,” he said.
