The mystery over the “mega” Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme has further deepened with an inquiry commission, headed by a jurist who served as a high court chief justice and a Supreme Court judge, failing to follow the basic but mandatory procedures — as pointed out by the Telangana high court in its recent judgment — that are prescribed in the Commission of Inquiry Act 1952 under which the commission was constituted.
Though the high court upheld the constitution of the commission, it declared the commission’s “adverse findings against petitioners — former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, former irrigation minister T. Harish Rao and two other senior bureaucrats — are “legally unsustainable and inoperative” because of the procedural lapse.
Gross negligence, irregularities and lacunae in planning, designing, constructing, awarding, and executing the contract, operation and maintenance — which form part of the terms of reference of the commission — would not have seen the light but for the sinking of the Medigadda barrage, one of the three barrages in KLIS, just before the 2023 elections.
Its project cost was originally projected at Rs 80,000 crore but is likely to exceed Rs 1.47 lakh crore, and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India established undue payments of thousands of crores of rupees to contractors. The National Dam Safety Agency pointed to design deficiencies, and the Ghose Commission’s findings — which the high court declared as unsustainable and inoperative — held Chandrashekar Rao and Harish Rao responsible for site selection and design.
It is beyond doubt that procedural and financial irregularities did take place, and the Congress, after forming the government, expected to take political advantage by punishing the culprits. However, its intent appears to have been diluted when the government restricted the probe to three barrages, leaving another major component of the KLIS — the pump house — out of its purview. It also tried to corner the third player in the state — the BJP — by preferring a CBI probe instead of its own investigation.
Now, with procedural lapses of the Ghose Commission clouding the probe, the CBI probe remains the only way the case could be brought to a logical conclusion — something that the BJP is likely to keep in cold storage for using it for political leverage at an appropriate time.
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