HYDERABAD: The BRS with its back to the wall over the damages to the Kaleshwaram project’s barrages that were built during its rule, appears to have decided to push with some vigour a conspiracy theory that the damages to the Medigadda barrage which was the worst hit of the project’s three barrages, was a result of an organised explosion. The opposition party, facing trenchant criticism of its handling of nearly every aspect of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme’s barrages ever since the government released the highlights of the Justice PC Ghose commission of inquiry report on the barrages, has finally gone public, officially, that it was a conspiracy likely engineered by the Congress and the BJP, that saw part of the Medigadda barrage crack and sink into the Godavari River bed. While the party working president K.T. Rama Rao had been repeatedly expressing ‘doubts’ that the conspiracy to bring down Medigadda barrage may have well been the handiwork of the then TPCC chief and now Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, on Saturday, the party general secretary R.S. Praveen Kumar declared at a press conference that “there was a conspiracy to blast the barrage and bring it down. A special investigation team (SIT) must be constituted to establish if the anti-social forces behind the conspiracy included Revanth Reddy, or Union ministers Bandi Sanjay Kumar, or G Kishan Reddy.” The former IPS officer turned politician further said, “Had the Mahadevpur police, who received a complaint about a loud noise just before cracks appeared on the piers of Block 7 of Medigadda resulting in a part of it sinking properly investigated and checked the phone records data of these three leaders, the conspirators would have been caught right then.” Ever since the government revealed that the Ghose commission found direct culpability of the then chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, and the then irrigation minister T. Harish Rao in the events leading to the sinking at Medigadda barrage, the BRS had been fighting back alleging that the entire report could have been motivated and the setting up of the judicial commission of inquiry was part of a political vendetta targeting Chandrashekar Rao. Doubling down on the BRS stand that a conspiracy was hatched to destroy the Medigadda barrage, Praveen Kumar further said, “A SIT probe must be instituted to investigate with Revanth, Bandi, or Kishan Reddy were involved in it or not. Why did the investigations so far never look into the explosion aspect? It was the Congress and the BJP that were behind the conspiracy and their role must be investigated.” Incidentally, after the October 21, 2023 incident at Medigadda when the BRS was in power, an assistant executive engineer posted at Medigadda in a complaint to the police on October 22 said a loud blast was heard just before the sinking of a portion of Block 7 and sought an investigation into the possibility of an explosive device causing the damages. While the then district superintendent of police Kiran Khare initially declared that there were no evidence of conspiracy and attributed to the damage to structural faults, a second corrected statement from him soon after dropped all mentions of structural faults as well as the ruling out of a conspiracy changing the narrative to the police receiving a petition from an irrigation official regarding damage to the barrage with a request to investigate matter thoroughly from all angles.
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