DC Edit | Kaleshwaram Reckoning Put Off

The mystery surrounding the ‘Mega’ Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme has deepened further with a commission of inquiry headed by a lawyer who has served as a chief justice of the high court and a judge of the Supreme Court, and which failed to follow basic but mandatory procedures – as pointed out by the Telangana high court in its recent judgment – prescribed in the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952, under which the commission was constituted.

Although the apex court approved the composition of the commission, it declared that the commission’s “adverse findings against the petitioners – former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, former irrigation minister T. Harish Rao and two other senior bureaucrats” were “legally unsustainable and unworkable” due to procedural error.

The gross negligences, irregularities and loopholes in the planning, designing, construction, tendering and execution of the contract, operation and maintenance, which form part of the commission’s terms of reference, would not have come to light had it not been for the sinking of the Medigadda dam, one of the three dams in the KLIS, just before the 2023 elections.

The project cost was initially estimated at Rs 80,000 billion, but is likely to exceed Rs 1.47 lakh billion, and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has initiated irregular payments of thousands of billion rupees to contractors. The National Dam Safety Agency pointed out design deficiencies and held Chandrashekar Rao and Harish Rao responsible for the site selection and design, the findings of the Ghose Commission, which the apex court declared unsustainable and unworkable.

There is no doubt that procedural and financial irregularities occurred, and the Congress, after forming the government, expected to gain political advantage by punishing offenders. However, the government’s intention to limit the investigation to three dams and leave another key component of the KLIS (the pump house) outside its remit appears to have been diluted. He also tried to corner the third player in the state (BJP) by opting for the CBI investigation instead of his own investigation.

Now, with the Ghose Commission’s procedural lapses marring the investigation, the CBI probe remains the only way to bring the case to its logical conclusion – something the BJP is likely to keep in cold storage to use for political influence at an opportune time.