Hyderabad/Medigadda: An ongoing vigilance inquiry into the sinking of six piers of Medigadda barrage — one of the three barrages that is part of the over Rs 1 lakh crore Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project in Telangana — has alleged glaring lapses and gross negligence on the part of the state’s irrigation department and the contractor, ThePrint has learnt.
The project was one of the showpiece endeavours of the erstwhile Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government, which had called it an “engineering marvel”. While the irrigation department is the project owner, it was executed by a joint venture of construction major L&T and PES Engineers Limited. L&T did the civil work, while PES’s role in the project was mechanical.
An interim report prepared by the state’s Vigilance and Enforcement (V&E) wing on the barrage failure has, in its findings, recommended disciplinary action against the irrigation department authorities and contractor L&T-PES for “negligence, failure to carry out inspection and maintenance despite being informed of damages and cracks appearing in the barrage structure and deviating from agreement conditions,” government sources told ThePrint.
The report was submitted to the state government last week.
Rajiv Ratan, Director General of Police (V&E) told ThePrint that investigation is ongoing to look into the lapses that led to the barrage failure. “We are looking into each and every aspect and hope to submit our final report in a couple of months,” he said.
Heads have started to roll after the vigilance report. The state government Wednesday evening terminated the service of engineer-in-chief N. Venkateswarlu, who was in-charge of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation System. ThePrint has a copy of the order.
Muralidhar, engineer-in-chief of the state irrigation department has been instructed to tender his resignation, a senior state government official said.
Medigadda barrage inaugurated much before it was complete
A source in the vigilance department said the Medigadda barrage, also called the Lakshmi barrage, was inaugurated in June 2019 by the then CM K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) much before it was completed. “Irrigation department engineers were well aware that a lot of work is pending at the barrage and it won’t be technically appropriate to open it but despite that they went ahead with the inauguration,” the source added.
Last October, just four years after the project was commissioned, six of the 86 piers of the Rs 3,662 crore Medigadda barrage in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district sank 1.2 metres along with the raft (foundation structure) on which they were standing. The barrage failure at Medigadda has now rendered the entire Kaleshwaram project inoperative.
The other two barrages under the project are at Annaram and Sundilla villages. All three barrages, constructed over the Godavari River, are currently not in operation.
Together, the three barrages diverted 195 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water to irrigate approximately 18.25 lakh acres of farmland in 13 of the worst drought-prone regions of the state through a network of canals, tunnels, lift systems and reservoirs.
It also provided 30 TMC drinking water to Hyderabad and Secunderabad cities, 10 TMC of drinking water to villages, and 16 TMC water for industrial use.
Muralidhar, engineer-in-chief in the state irrigation and CAD department, told ThePrint that any major civil structure such as dams and barrages are built for a period of 100 years.
“Nobody designs a project to fail. But there have been maintenance and other lapses in Medigadda barrage. How and why it happened is a matter of detailed study,” he said.
The barrage failure at Medigadda had triggered a blame game between the Revanth Reddy-led Congress government, which took office in December, and the erstwhile KCR administration.
Speaking to ThePrint, Telangana irrigation minister N. Uttam Reddy confirmed that the interim vigilance report had been submitted.
“It’s a damning indictment of the previous government. The report came to me last week and we are going to initiate action very soon,” he said.
Reddy added, “As we investigate the matter now, we find that there is a problem with the design, construction and maintenance of not only the Medigadda barrage but Annaram and Sundilla barrages as well.”
The minister said no water is being stored in the three barrages as of now “because of fear it will collapse if there is water storage”.
“It’s sheer criminal negligence and somebody will have to pay the price,” he said.
The Telangana government has sought a judicial inquiry in the case. “We have written to the chief justice of Telangana High Court to spare a sitting high court judge to head the judicial inquiry and we are expecting a reply anytime now,” the minister said.
Cement concrete block dislodged, O&M lapse
The Medigadda barrage was inaugurated in June 2019 by then CM KCR.
Just five months after that, a cement concrete block got “dislodged” and “damaged” the parametric joint of the plinth slab, rendering the barrage “susceptible to piping (erosion) and subsequent progressive failure,” government sources quoted the vigilance report as saying.
The report observes that this is a major operations and maintenance (O&M) lapse, which happened because of the “negligence of the dam owner”, a source said.
The project authorities, the source added, were found to have neither inspected nor maintained the cement concrete block or the launching aprons since the barrage was commissioned in 2019-20. They also did not maintain any record of O&M in gross violation of the Dam Safety Act 2021, the source added.
Several cracks were also observed in the piers in Block 7 (there are a total of eight Blocks) that extended to the raft, the source said, adding that the cracks were very pronounced in pier 20.
The vigilance team noted that, ever since the barrage was inaugurated by the CM in 2019, there was no O&M carried out by the project contractor or the irrigation department.
The team, according to the source, also found that no maintenance was carried out on the barrage despite the irrigation department issuing four notices to L&T between 2020 and 2023 to address damages in the cement concrete blocks.
“Neither the irrigation department nor L&T took up the restoration of the damaged portion …,” the vigilance team has noted in its report, the source said.
An L&T spokesperson, however, told ThePrint that the company has diligently informed the relevant department about the damages to the barrage on multiple occasions, with the initial official correspondence dating back to May 2020. “Regrettably, despite our proactive efforts, we are yet to receive any response from the department regarding the issues raised,” the spokesperson said in a written response.
The spokesperson added, “At L&T, we take immense pride in our role as nation builders, embodying engineering excellence and adhering to global best practices in corporate governance. The matter is under investigation and deliberation by competent authorities. L&T will take appropriate action to restore the damaged portion as soon as the competent authorities conclude their investigations and suggest remedial measures.”
The National Dam Safety Authority, which inspected the Medigadda barrage after the incident came to light, had also pointed to “construction deficiencies due to lack of stringent quality control” and “deficiencies in project”.
Besides this, the vigilance team came across “several deviations from the contract agreement” for Medigadda barrage, a second government source said.
“Multiple completion certificates on different dates were issued for the project in violation of the agreement bond signed between the state’s Irrigation & Command Area Development department and the L&T-PES JV for executing the project on 26 August, 2016,” the second source added.
In one instance, the vigilance team reportedly noted that the engineer-in-chief issued a letter on 11 November, 2020, where he said the defect-liability period — the period after a project’s completion where a contractor is liable to repair structural defects — starts from 29 February 2020. “But he recommended release of bank guarantees to the contractor even when work was pending. This is wrong and disciplinary action should be initiated against them,” the source said.
The contract bond specifies a defect-liability period of two years after the completion of work in all respects. The contractor is also responsible for O&M for five years after the project’s completion.
The vigilance team, sources said, also found that many approvals were issued for the project in deviation from the agreement and which were not supported by any inspection notes of the higher authorities.
Cofferdam not removed after barrage was constructed
In its report, the vigilance team also highlighted that the contractor allegedly did not remove the cofferdam along with other structures such as sheet piles that were erected during construction to obstruct the flow of water after the Medigadda barrage was completed.
A cofferdam is built to divert water from the river to enable the construction of a barrage.
The vigilance report, sources said, noted that the cofferdam was not dismantled even after a lapse of five seasons and once the barrage became operational.
“This could have influenced the water flow of the river,” the source said.
Maintenance of records and log book
When ThePrint visited the Medigadda barrage site Wednesday, leftover portions of the cofferdam, sheet piles, large volume of earthwork and boulders were strewn around on the left side of the barrage, a few metres away from the barrage gates, obstructing the natural flow of the water.
“These structures should have been removed before inauguration by L&T. It looks like they have simply abandoned the project,” an irrigation department official at the site said.
A second source said the vigilance probe also found that neither the dam owner nor the contractor kept a record of all maintenance activities — either immediate or preventive maintenance work, description of work performed, the length of time it took to complete the work with dates, equipment and materials used, before and after photos, among other details.
Irrigation minister Uttam Reddy blamed the BRS government for leaving behind an unviable project “for which KCR mortgaged the life of all Telangana people and their children”.
“The state borrowed money at a high cost and built an unviable project,” he said.
BRS spokesperson Dasoju Srravan told ThePrint, “Let the inquiry committee come out with its report. Let the government inquire and table the report in the Assembly. Instead of doing that, they are indulging in regular rhetoric and mudslinging. Any attempt to malign the world’s largest lift irrigation project is not in the long-term interest of Telangana.”
State irrigation secretary Rahul Bojja said the government is also parallelly setting up a technical expert panel to conduct an in-depth study on what happened at Medigadda, and suggest a course of action — whether the barrage can be recovered by doing some rehabilitation work or if it’s completely defunct.
The panel will have members from the Central Water Commission, National Dam Safety Authority, and the Central Water and Power Research Station, among others.
“Till the time the expert committee gives a 100 percent clearance that physically the structure of the barrage is safe, we will not store water or make it operational,” he told ThePrint.
The expert committee will also study the structural design of the Annaram and Sundilla barrages, given that all three were built on the same design.
“So, if something happened in Medigadda, it is likely that the same phenomenon can happen in Sundilla and Annaram,” another government official said.
While the original cost of the Kaleshwaram project was Rs 80,000 crore, it escalated to Rs 1.05 lakh crore, according to an irrigation department official. So far, the main trunk, comprising 80 percent of the project, has been completed. “The distributary network of the project to carry the water to the fields is under execution,” C. Muralidhar said.
According to a policy statement tabled in the assembly in 2018, the Telangana government has allocated a budget for the project from state funds and also set up a special purpose vehicle — Kaleshwaram Irrigation Project Corporation Ltd — to raise financial assistance from a consortium of nationalised banks, the Power Finance Corporation, the Rural Electrification Corporation, and NABARD.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
Also read: Centre blames Telangana for ‘defective’ Kaleshwaram project but central agencies gave clearances too