New Delhi: Retired engineer with Irrigation department Dontula Lakshminarayana said that a petition has been filed against the Kaleshwaram project in Supreme Court. The petition states that the project had been redesigned only to misuse the public funds. The Supreme Court will take up the case on July 9.

The retired engineer said the redesign was above the required total water storage capacity and it was only to waste public money. Even as the chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao was portraying the Kaleshwaram site as a tourist spot, the project with 19 reservoirs was being built over and above the desired capacity, the petition said.

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Lakshminarayana said that while the storage capacity was 144 tmcs, the government was claiming to give 170 tmcs "which is completely absurd." He observed that irrigation projects consume huge budgets, and the government should not blindly redesign them with commissions and contractors in mind. He submitted in his petition that a project whose cost was Rs 50,000 crores, in the name of redesign has been hiked to Rs 90,000 crores.