BRS to counter Congress misinformation campaign with ‘Chalo Medigadda’

Led by party working president KT Rama Rao, around 150 senior BRS leaders are expected to visit the Medigadda barrage

Hyderabad: In a strategic move to combat the misinformation campaign by the Congress government regarding the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS), the opposition BRS is all set to embark on its ‘Chalo Medigadda’ programme on Friday. Led by party working president KT Rama Rao, around 150 senior BRS leaders are expected to visit the Medigadda barrage.

Departing from the party headquarters at Telangana Bhavan in Hyderabad, the BRS team will tour Medigadda, where former Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao will give a presentation on the project’s key features and its impact on the State. Later, they are also planning to visit the Annaram and Sundilla barrages and other reservoirs.

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For over two months now, politics in the State has been revolving around the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project with both the ruling Congress and the main opposition BRS trading charges. While the Congress has been trying to project Kaleshwaram as evidence for the corruption during the BRS regime, the latter is terming this a misinformation campaign only to delay repair works and to turn the entire project redundant so that the Congress can gain some political mileage ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

The BRS decided to visit the Medigadda barrage in response to the recent visit of Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, Ministers and other Congress legislators to the barrage on February 13. The Congress leaders also alleged that the previous BRS government spent Rs.94,000 crore to irrigate only 98,000 acres of new ayacut. However, BRS working president KT Rama Rao invited the Ministers and other Congress leaders to join the ‘Chalo Medigadda’ programme to verify the facts.

The BRS plans to explain the project’s benefits and expose the Congress party’s conspiracies to turn the entire KLIS into a non-performing asset by deliberately delaying necessary repair works at Medigadda and other locations. The main opposition party leadership repeatedly dismissed the Congress’s claims of potential destruction of the entire project, stating that the engineering solutions for repairing damaged barrages are available.

Though the BRS demanded in the Assembly for action against those responsible for damages and to conduct a probe into the project’s construction, there has been no formidable action from the State government so far.

The BRS also cautioned the State government against playing with farmers’ lives by postponing repairs and alleged that the Congress was conspiring to let the three barrages – Medigadda, Annaram, and Sundilla – be washed away in the upcoming rainy season. The ‘Chalo Medigadda’ programme aims to present a comprehensive counter-narrative to the Congress’s assertions, shedding light on the Kaleshwaram project’s positive impact on the region.