: A small but crucial fact – that the Godavari is a river — was omitted from the contract that the irrigation department under the BRS government signed with L&T PES-JV during the construction of the Medigadda barrage. This ended up costing the state more than Rs.61 crore, an expenditure that could have been avoided, for a cofferdam – meant to stop, and divert water — to enable construction at the Medigadda barrage site.
The cofferdam is dismantled after the main structure comes up. The bid documents specified that the cost of building the cofferdam, and its later dismantling, must be borne by the contractor. However, the bid document only mentioned a cofferdam constructed across a ‘nala’, a ‘vagu’, or a ‘drain’.
That the fact that Godavari is a river on which the Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages were built was never included these bid documents. According to K. Sudhakar Reddy, chief engineer (full additional charge) of the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme, who was superintending engineer at the time the contract was signed, all the three barrages were built on Godavari, a “major perennial river in India” at which “huge diversion and dewatering” are required.
As “the barrages had to be built in a shorter period of two years, the cofferdam has been included in the estimates as per the detailed project report given by WAPCOS,” he said. Sudhakar Reddy was deposing on Saturday before the Justice P.C.
Ghose commission of inquiry into the c.
