The Andhra Pradesh government, which had enhanced the estimated cost of the multi-purpose Polavaram irrigation project by 82.44 per cent to Rs 7,372.22 crore a couple of days ago, has said the value of the work packages for which the tender process was already under way remained the same.
The work packages include three project components — spillway, ECRF dam and foundation excavation of power house excluding its civil, electro-mechanical and hydro mechanical works.
In the original administrative approval, the project cost was estimated at Rs 4,040.92 crore based on the 2004-05 standard scheduled rates. This also covered the works that were excluded from the above tenders.
However, in 2011, the government enhanced the estimated cost of the three components to Rs 4,717 crore — more than the original estimated total cost — and invited tenders for the same.
Engineer-in-chief (Irrigation), C Muralidhar, on Friday said the three project components with an internal benchmark (IBM) cost of Rs 4,717 crore remained the same. In a clarification, he added that the difference of Rs 2,655.22 crore pertains to the works that were excluded in the above package.
It may be noted that the state government had cancelled the award of this contract a couple of time — first under intense political opposition on alleged favoritism and then due to court intervention against the alleged irregularities in the tender process.
Polavaram is one of the two projects recommended for national status. The other is the lift-irrigation based Pranahita-Chevella project in the Telangana region. Besides the Odisha government, pro-Telangana forces have been opposing the construction of Polavaram project, effectively delaying the national project status entailing a central grant.
Renamed as the Indira Sagar Polavaram Project when YS Rajasekhara Reddy was chief minister, this ambitious project with inter-state implications is meant to create new irrigation potential of 720,000 acres in addition to a 960-Mw hydel power generation and supply of 23.44 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water for industrial and drinking requirements of Visakhapatnam and adjoining areas.
Besides, Odisha and Chhattisgarah, which will get affected due to land submergence once the project is in place, were offered to utilise 5 TMC and 1.5 TMC of water respectively through lifting from pondage.
The government had also proposed to include a grand plan of transferring 80 TMC of water from Godavari to Krishna river by interlinking the two major rivers after completion of the project. It is estimated that about 3,000 TMC of water from Godavari river drains into the Bay of Bengal during floods every year.
