Vijayawada: An inquiry into the construction of the Polavaram project will land many Telugu Desam leaders including AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu in jail, former YSRCP MP Undavalli Arun Kumar said.

Addressing the media here on Sunday, he said that if Polavaram is completed, 800 tmc of water could be utilised. “Late Chief Minister Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy had the vision and understood the fact that after Sriram Sagar, Polavaram had the potential to get water through gravity and therefore, ensured that tenders were called and all permissions obtained. The visionary leader that he was, Dr. YSR factored the costs likely to be incurred during rehabilitation of people in submerged areas, and convinced the chief ministers of the neighboring states on the ramifications of the project,” Arun Kumar said. He said that all objections from other states were ironed out by the late YSR.

Arun Kumar pointed out that Polavaram was declared a national project in 2014 at the time of bifurcation of the state. He wondered as to why the Chandrababu Naidu government was hell-bent on taking it up when it was a part of the Reorganisation Act. Further, he criticised Chandrababu Naidu for agreeing to the Centre’s condition of releasing funds as per 2014 rates, as spelt out by Niti Aayog.

The Centre has clearly asked to put the tender process on hold as the Amarjit Singh letter states, which also questioned why details related to the procedure were not posted on time on the website, he said. The Centre also took note of the discrepancies in the state government’s approach as objected to by opposition parties, he added. For instance, the Union government took notice of the fact that while the state government paper notification put the cost at Rs 1,300 crores, the website hiked it to Rs 1,400 crores, which was mainly to help their crony contractors, he said.