Ex-Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and two members of his former cabinet - Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao and Finance Minister Eatala Rajender - have been accused of "brazen procedural and financial irregularities" over the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project.
The 650-page report singled out Bharat Rashtra Samithi boss KCR, as the former Chief Minister is called, for taking the "sole and individual decision" to construct the barrages at certain locations by ignoring government protocol, including approval of his cabinet of ministers.
The report, which also named senior IAS officials of the time, said the Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla barrages suffered from a "profound failure of governance, planning, and oversight".
Authored by a Commission of Inquiry, the report also noted that experts' recommendations the Medigadda barrage should not be constructed - due to 'prohibitive costs' - was "intentionally not considered" and kept in "cold storage" by KCR and the then-Irrigation Minister, Harish Rao.
The report, therefore, held KCR directly accountable for a cascade of irregularities and said his "involvement and directions minutely... is the cause and result of irregularities and the cause of distress to these three barrages".
The Irrigation Minister at the time, Harish Rao, was held jointly responsible for the suppression of the report about the Medigadda barrage. And, according to the inquiry commission, the Finance Minister at the time, Eatala Rajender, allegedly demonstrated a "lack of commitment and integrity in safeguarding the financial and economic health of the newly-formed state".
While Harish Rao remains with KCR's Bharat Rashtra Samithi, Eatala Rajender joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in June 2021, two years before the Assembly election in which the Congress would dump the BRS, which had ruled Telangana since it was formed, out of power.
The inquiry commission's findings, meanwhile, also held named senior IAS officers, including SK Joshi, the then Principal Secretary to the government's Irrigation and Command Area Development, allegedly helped suppress the Medigadda barrage report.
Another officer named was Smita Sabharwal, the Additional Secretary/Secretary to the Chief Minister at the time. The report said she did not act in a "diligent" manner.
The report has set the stage for potential legal and political repercussions, with the commission explicitly calling for the recovery of funds and an investigation into what it described as "collusion between project authorities and contractors".
It concluded that a project once hailed as the 'lifeline of the state' has become a colossal waste of public money due to a deep-seated failure of leadership and accountability at the highest levels.
