YSR red-faced as his pet projects go off-track

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy made a rather ludicrous claim while inaugurating the Gangavaram Port near Visakhapatnam the other day: “Every major project that our government has conceived is going on on a war-footing and getting completed within the stipulated time.”
Rajasekhara Reddy’s proclamation was amazing given the fact that his office (read the so-called Press Secretary) has been issuing statements these days saying how the Chief Minister was venting ire at the officials for not being able to complete the projects in time, particularly the irrigation projects that are the “flagship” of his government.
The Chief Minister, if his Press Secretary’s statements are to be believed, is increasingly growing restive as the major projects taken up by his government over the last five years have gone off the track.
Not a single project worth the name, including the massive irrigation projects taken up under the ambitious Jalayagnam programme, have taken shape yet leaving the Chief Minister red-faced.
Be it projects like the Hyderabad Metro Rail, Hyderabad Growth Corridor (outer ring road), P V Narasimha Rao Elevated Expressway or the various power projects… nothing has been completed despite changing the deadlines many times. Worse is the case of the irrigation projects, the “pride and prestige” of the Rajasekhara Reddy government.
For instance, the Chief Minister himself announced that the Pulichintala Irrigation Project on river Krishna would be completed by the year 2007 when he laid the foundation-stone in October 2004. The deadline was subsequently extended to 2008 and again to 2009 but so far not even 60 per cent of the project is complete. Now, the Chief Minister is so upset that he wants the contractor changed so that the project will move ahead.
Same is the case with many irrigation projects in the Telangana region. Projects like the Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation scheme and Yellampally are mired in controversies and moving at a snail’s pace much to the chagrin of the Chief Minister.
So much so that he had directed the officials concerned to slap penalties on the contractors executing the projects for the inordinate delay.
“We have started the massive irrigation projects to help the farmers and make every acre of cultivable land irrigated. We are spending a lot of money on these projects. I don’t believe in excuses. I believe in work done,” Rajasekhara Reddy has been curtly telling the irrigation officials at every review meeting these days.
In fact, over the past few days the Chief Minister has been busy reviewing all the major projects undertaken by his government. And, at each of those reviews, the Chief Minister has been taking the officials concerned to task, statements issued by his office reveal.
Time and again the Chief Minister has been claiming that “funds are not a constraint” when in fact the state finances are in shambles, thanks to his over-zealous populist schemes.
“There is no denying the fact that the economic downturn has cast its spell on our state finances as well. So, adjusting funds for the major projects is proving a Herculean task,” a top bureaucrat in the finance department noted.
The state made money by disposing of huge chunks of government land between 2006 and mid-2008, thanks to the real-estate boom. With the realty market going bust, the state’s revenue resources dried up, impacting the projects.
Besides, the contractors who secured crores of rupees from the state government in the form of ‘mobilisation advance’ did not step up the works in the latter part, again because of the crisis in the realty sector.
This apart, the state government could not complete the land acquisition process for major projects because of pending court cases and resistance from affected people.
On the power front, Rajasekhara Reddy admitted that the capacity addition in the state during the X Plan period was just 2940 MW as against the target of 4257 MW. Of the targeted capacity addition of 13,661 MW during the XI Plan period, only 1190 MW could be added so far while another 3250 MW proposed under the Central sector might spill over to the XII Plan period.