Congress in a fix on Polavaram

From Political, ideological, cultural and territorial moorings, Telangana agitation seems to have treading a new path with the outbreak of Polavaram tenders' controversy and TRS writing to Chief Minister K Kiran Kumar Reddy to cancel the tenders as the matter is in Supreme Court and the Party opposes the project tooth and nail.

After the slanging match between TDP and TRS over the Poalavaram tenders and an aggrieved party moving High Court alleging irregularities in the allotment, TRS Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao writes to the Chief Minister to cancel the tenders and reiterates his party stand that the project is against the interests of the people of Telangana.

The crux of the issue was not the stand of TRS on the beleaguered   Polavaram project, but the objection was directed towards the promoter of a pro-Telangana newspaper and his business associates who bagged the contract; though TRS stand is against the project. Commercial interests and Political ideology tend to differ many times but the twosome learned to co-exist over a period of time.

The issue coming at a time when Telangana strike was at a high pitch and soon after some leaders’ Delhi visit raises many doubts and inferences are drawn by individuals, institutions and Political parties to suit their respective line of thinking.

Telangana and Polavaram cannot go together is something that can be read beyond reasonable doubt, was the reading till recently. Chandrasekhar Rao reiterated that he has been opposing the project as it was violating all applicable laws and submerges extensive tribal tracts in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chattisgarh displacing over 73,000 people.

Rao tried to rewind the sequence of events and meetings held involving Congress leaders in Delhi and the legal tangle since 2005 in a three-page letter to Chief Minister and stressed on the Wait till SC verdict point. At the same time, breathing intensity into the controversy, Uttarandhra Rakshana Vedika (URV) has demanded the government to complete the Polavaram project along with Uttarandhra Sujala Sravanthi at any cost.

Chandrasekhar Rao’s letter has certainly put the Congress on the defensive. At a time when TDP and BJP were accusing a tie-up between the TRS and Congress, the letter has certainly put the ruling party in the defensive. On one hand Telangana Ministers, MLAs and MPs are at loggerheads with the government and the decision of opening tenders and allotting Polavaram works has put the Kiran Kumar Reddy government in a piquant situation.

What the courts say may bring some relief to the government but the entire situation has been very unpleasant for the ruling party.  Faced by dissent from within and from all over, the party is trying its best to conduct itself in a non-controversial mode but the tenders issue has stirred a hornet’s nest. Polavaram has been a contentious issue from the beginning as the ripples will be felt in three states and displacement of tribal families is involved. 

The project aims to create a new ayacut of 7.2 lakh acres and stabilize of 25 lakh acre of the ayacut in the Krishna and Godavari delta; in its course it would submerge 206 villages in Khammam district besides 23 in Orissa and Chhattisgarh and displaces 1.94 lakh people.