It may be recalled that on October 21, 2023, the then BRS government revealed, after pictures and videos of a sunken section of the road on the barrage began making the rounds, that one of the pillars of Block 7 of the barrage had developed some cracks. Subsequent investigations were kept under wraps with no specifics being revealed by the government, which, however, entered into a war of words with the National Dam Safety Authority for the latter’s conclusions of poor design, construction and maintenance.
As per the contract with L&T, which built the Medigadda barrage, the company is responsible for the operation and maintenance of civil structures for a period of five years. Even if the company was not doing its job, it is a mystery why irrigation officials never raised any questions. Flood pressure dissipation blocks weighing up to 20 tonnes each were thrown afar during the 2019 floods, the aprons on which water flows once released from the gates began suffering damage and water began seeping out from under the foundations leading to eventual sinking of Block 7.
“This is nothing but callous negligence. It is incomprehensible that no one has been held accountable in the past for such dereliction,” sources said.
They also said that when a team of officials, led by the director general vigilance and enforcement, Rajiv Ratan, went to Medigadda on January 16 and 17, the irrigation officials did not expect them to go to the river bed to inspect the extent of the damage.
“We did some unexpected things, went on the coffer dam that was being built. Several pillars were found at an inclination in addition to severe damage to the structure. And the cracks were through and through and not just on the surface. We are certain that irrigation engineers were aware of these but stayed silent. If they had informed their higher ups, then they stayed silent, or if the government was informed, it stayed silent,” an official, who visited the site as part of the team, said.
“Few things have become clear in the probe. The designs were faulty, the construction was of poor quality and there was no maintenance worth mentioning, since its completion,” sources, familiar with the findings of the ongoing probe, told Deccan Chronicle.
And it is absolutely shocking that no one involved in the project appeared to have taken into account the cost of its failure, the sources added.
On explanations given by some irrigation department engineers, and even the then BRS government that a once-in-a-100-year old flood in Godavari resulted in stressing the barrage beyond its capabilities, the sources said “when an entire state is made to look at a project, such excuses have no place. Structures can fail for a variety of reasons, but the cost of failure must be built in.”
The Medigadda barrage alone is estimated to have cost `3,200 crore to build.
With all 11 pillars of Block 7 developing cracks and stresses – with most damage suffered by pillar no 19, along with the adjacent pillars 20 and 21 – the sources said that the ongoing probe has more or less come to the conclusion that “these are not something that can be dismantled and rebuilt. The fact is that the blocks adjacent to the damaged one are also under stress. What happened at Medigadda is a humiliation of the entire Telangana irrigation department.”
On whether any evidence has been found of any irrigation official pointing out to the government that things were not going right either during design, construction or later, the sources said this was not the case.
“No professional would ever agree to such things. And now, they (irrigation officials) appear to be in a state of shock that things could go wrong at such a scale,” the sources said.
“At least now, someone should stand up and say sorry to the people. Our task is not to fix individual responsibility but to find out what went wrong, and it is for the government to take further steps,” the sources said.
