Bhubaneswar: The courtesy call-cum-night halt by Telangana chief minister and TRS chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao in Odisha has ruffled feathers in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
While the meeting between the two chief ministers was seen in the political circles as an attempt to explore an alternative front to the Congress and BJP-led alliances, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu smelled a rat and dubbed it as a machination to block the construction of the of multipurpose Indira Sagar Polavaram project on the Godavari.
“During their meeting in Bhubaneswar, Mr Patnaik and KCR discussed steps to stop the Polavaram project work. I don’t understand why they are trying to block the project that is the lifeline of Andhra Pradesh,” Naidu told a gathering of farmers on Monday.
While maintaining that the project posed no threat to either Telangana or Odisha, he vowed to complete it by December 2019.
“There would be no impact on Telangana and Odisha would get to use five thousand million cubic feet of water once the project is completed,” he said, adding that people in the submergence areas of the project (falling in Odisha) would be fully rehabilitated.
Naidu further said that he would hold talks with his Odisha counterpart on the issue.
He also pleaded with Naveen not to pursue the court cases as the project could never be completed if stalled for any reason.
The AP government got a fillip when the Supreme Court on December 3 rejected Odisha’s review petition to stop the ongoing work. A three-member bench of the apex court instead directed the Centre to ask Odisha and Chhattisgarh to submit details about the area to be submerged, the number of people to be affected by the proposed project along with compensation and rehabilitation of the affected people after which the public hearing can be conducted in these two states.
In October, Naidu had thrown an open challenge at Odisha and its neighbours to stall the project and said that his government was determined and committed make it functional by May 2019.
