Hyderabad: The Telangana government, by a midnight announcement in the legislative assembly, handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) a probe into the alleged corruption and irregularities in the construction of an estimated over Rs 1 lakh crore Kaleswaram lift-irrigation project on river Godavari in the state. The announcement came around 1:30 am on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday (September 1) by the chief minister A. Revanth Reddy and followed heated exchanges between the treasury benches comprising the Congress and the main opposition, Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), after the report of the commission of inquiry headed by Justice (retired) PInaki Chandra Ghose was tabled in the House earlier in the day. The BRS staged a walkout from the House with its members throwing in the air shredded pieces of paper pulled out from the 665-page-report that nailed the party president and former chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his nephew T. Harish Rao, who was the irrigation minister when the project was implemented.Harish Rao, the face of the BRS throughout the more-than-six-hour debate in the House, called the report “trash” and accused the commission of lacking legal sanctity as proper notices under Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, were not served either on him or Chandrasekhar Rao prior to summoning them for questioning. Rao also called the inquiry unfair, illogical and illegal, but this was refuted by the chief minister and a host of ministers who intervened in the debate. Chandrasekhar Rao was not present in the House. CM Reddy also warned Harish Rao that he was free to criticise the report but not a judge like Justice Ghose. Rao recalled instances when the commissions against Indira Gandhi, L.K. Advani and J. Jayalalithaa were struck down by courts for not serving notices. The tabling of the commission’s report in the assembly coincided with a lunch motion moved by the former chief minister and his son in the high court, seeking directions to the legislature not to permit the report to be taken up for discussion. Also, the government should not be allowed to launch follow-up action. The court posted the case for Tuesday, September 2. The single-person commission had submitted the report in three volumes to the government on July 31 after 16 months of cross-examination of 119 witnesses, including Chandrasekhar Rao, Harish Rao and a former finance minister Eatala Rajender, who is now a BJP MP. The government later appointed a committee of senior IAS officers to study the document. It was then approved by the cabinet where a decision was taken to initiate followup action after discussion in a special session of the Assembly. The latest decision in the assembly to handover the probe to the CBI sinks with the demand of the BJP whose two Union ministers from the state have repeatedly urged the government to concede it. After the six-hour debate in the House, which was initiated by irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, the chief minister announced to the House that the report of the commission had detected several lapses and irregularities liable for criminal action. It highlighted deliberate suppression of wrongdoing, ill motive and negligence on the part of the previous regime in implementation of the project. He said it was apt to seek a CBI report as the project involved inter-state issues, multiple agencies of the state, as well as central government. Agencies like the Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS), Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and the Rural Electrification Corporation of the Union government had played crucial roles in project implementation. Reddy added that the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) had identified planning, design and quality control lapses in the project which resulted in a couple of piers of the main barrage at Medigadda sinking in October 2023 when the BRS was still in power. Seepages in two other barrages further strengthened doubts of poor quality of works. There were also doubts of extraction of commissions from contractors who built the barrages and other infrastructure. As a result, a thorough inquiry was needed to unearth the criminal angle. He also highlighted the disclosure of lakhs of crores from a chief engineer of the project in raids conducted by police a few months ago. He referred to the chief engineer, B. Hari Ram, who was sent to jail in an assets case booked by police. Another engineer-in-chief, C. Muralidhar, was also put behind bars in a similar case. “How can you (Chandrasekhar Rao) own farm houses over hundreds of acres, newspaper publications and TV channels (without resorting to illegal means)?” the irrigation minister asked. The BRS government borrowed Rs 85,449 crore, which included Rs. 27,738 crore from the PFC at 11.5% interest and Rs 30,536 crore from other financial institutions at 12% interest. So far, the Congress government has repaid Rs 19,879 crore principal and Rs 29,956 crore as interest, totalling to Rs 49,835 crore. The government still had a debt burden of Rs 60,869 crore, while another Rs 47,000 crore was needed to complete pending works of the project. He held Chandrasekhar Rao responsible for shifting the site of the main barrage from Tummidi Hatti in Adilabad district to Medigadda in Karimnagar as pointed out by the commission. Chandrasekhar Rao prevailed over WAPCOS to submit the detailed project report suggesting Medigadda as the ideal site for the barrage though the agency was in favour of locating it at Tummidi Hatti. He drew parallels between the barrage at Medigadda and a small dam that withstood water inflows double its capacity in flood battered Kamareddy town recently to highlight the poor quality of works in Kaleswaram project. Harish Rao, who was the sole speaker on behalf of the BRS, claimed that the government rushed through the presentation of the report in the assembly on a Sunday fearing that the court may grant stay on the next working day. He termed the report and the investigation itself slanderous against the BRS.Rao reiterated the BRS stand that the site was shifted as there was no yield of water required for a dam with a height of 152 metres at Tummidi Hatti. About 116 kms downstream of the river course, at Medigadda, several streams joined to boost the flows. Earlier, irrigation minister Kumar read out excerpts from the commission report which, among others, said the previous government had overlooked the recommendation of an expert committee of five irrigation engineers to locate the main barrage at Tummidi Hatti. If grounded at the take off point for the project at Tummidi Hatti on Pranahita, a tributary of Godavari, the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the centre had committed to fund seventy five per cent of the project under itsAccelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP). After the change of guard at the Union and state government in 2014, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government gave hydrological clearance to the project from Tummidi Hatti. By then, the Congress government in the state had already spent Rs 6,157 crore while another Rs 5,523 crore was spent by the succeeding BRS regime. The total expenditure of Rs 11,680 crore was 32% of the Rs 38,500 crore project cost. All this was now “criminal waste”.The minister added that only one lift was needed to impound water to a height of 19 meters after the river travelled 70 kms from Tummidi Hatti. The water would have flowed by gravity for the rest of the distance up to Chevella in Hyderabad outskirts. The power demand due to multiple lifts from pumphouses at Medigadda and the other barrages in the re-engineered Kaleswaram project went up to 8,450 megawatts (MW) from 3,400 MW in the earlier version. Apart from instituting the commission of inquiry in March last year, the Revanth Reddy government also ordered a probe into damage to the barrage at Medigadda by the NDSA and the vigilance commission. The report of the commission, in particular, found former chief secretary S.K. Joshi, Muralidhar and Hari Ram are liable for action for intentionally suppressing the report of the expert committee of engineers. For the lapse in not taking the consent of the cabinet for the project at Medigadda, the commission identified a secretary in Chandrsekhar Rao’s office Smita Sabharwal, IAS, guilty of violating business rules of the government. Appropriate legal action should be taken against all of them. The commission also named engineers who issued certificates of completion of works to contractors though they remained incomplete. The vigilance commission, on the other, recommended criminal cases against 33 engineers.The Justice Ghose commission took the name of Chandrasekhar Rao 266 times and that of Harish Rao 63 times while pointing out their lapses. It said the location at Medigadda, project alignment, designs, capacity and construction were determined by Google maps and not based on the findings of WAPCOS. The use of Google maps was confirmed by Joshi in his affidavit to the commission. In fact, the government cleared the project even before WAPCOS submitted the DPR eleven months after its services were commissioned.