QUESTION TIME: Superintending Engineer of Dr. K.L. Rao Sagar Project (Pulichintala) S. Satyanarayana explaining to Higher Education Minister Pinnamaneni Venkateswara Rao and other elected representatives of Krishna district about the progress of the project, at Vajinepalli in Nalgonda district on Tuesday.

VAJINEPALLI (Nalgonda Dt): Ministers and elected representatives of Krishna district on Tuesday said they would bring various issues of dispute that were holding up the Dr. K.L. Rao Sagar (Pulichintala) project work to the notice of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy during his visit to Machilipatnam on October 29 for an early solution.

They were speaking to newspersons after visiting the project site here, where they interacted with irrigation officials and a representative of Srinivasa Constructions Limited, the company that has been contracted to execute the project at a cost of Rs.268 crores.

Delay in execution

At the end of a long session of quizzing, Ministers Pinnamaneni Venkateswara Rao, Koneru Ranga Rao and the MLAs admitted that there was, indeed, some delay in the completion of work, mainly because of the dispute between the contractor and the Irrigation Department over the number of crest gates to be fixed to the dam.

The issue was now waiting to be resolved by a Dispute Adjudication Board of three retired chief engineers. Mr. Venkateswara Rao said that as against 83,000 cubic metres of concrete work that should have been completed by now as per original schedule, only 30,000 cubic metres had been completed. As against 20 per cent of the work that should have been completed, only 9 per cent could be completed.

Executive director of Srinivasa Constructions Limited D. Srinivas argued that the letter of sanction given to his company and the tender documents mutually agreed upon contained references to only 24 gates, which would be enough to withstand the highest possible flood of 20 lakh cusecs.

`Will meet deadline'

But it was only as an after-thought that "one or two higher officials" of the Irrigation Department had sent instructions to the Superintending Engineer of the project to get the work executed with 33 gates, he maintained. However, Mr. Srinivas assured the Ministers and the MLAs that his company would still be able to complete the entire work before the original deadline of June 2008 "if the dispute is settled in one month."

Superintending Engineer S. Satyanarayana and Executive Engineer P.V.S. Sai said they had received instructions from higher-ups about 33 gates and were merely implementing them.

Among those who raised many questions to the contractor and the officials and sought specific answers were Tenali MP V. Balashowy, Kankipadu MLA Devineni Rajasekhar (Nehru), Repalle (Guntur district) MLA Devineni Mallikharjuna Rao, Mylavaram MLA Chanumolu Venkata Rao and Chairman of AP Cooperative Bank (APCOB) Vasantha Nageswara Rao. They sought to know whether the safety of the structure could be assured if an earth dam was built instead of a concrete dam and also whether the concrete was being mixed at the right temperature, the two issues on which several adverse media reports had appeared.

Government whip S. Udyabhanu coordinated the programme, which was attended by Kaikaluru MLA Y. Raja Ramchander, Nuzvid MLA M.Venkata Pratapa Appa Rao and Zilla Parishad Chairperson K. Nageswara Rao among others.

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