Centre's tough queries on Polavaram make TDP jittery

The Central Water Commission is asking hard questions to the AP Government on Polavaram. After Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s recent visit  to Polavaram, the Centre has begun asking tough questions about cost escalation. For instance, the Central Water Commission is asking how the area under submergence has increased. 

In 2005, the area under submergence is 57000 acres, while last year, the area was changed to 1.5 lakh acres. CWC chairperson Masood Hussain raised this question. He asked how the area has increased when the storage capacity remained the same. The officials said there were differences in topographical survey and field survey. Hence the area has increased, they said.

However, there is another hitch. A large chunk of the lands in the submergence area were previously shown as Government lands. But, now they are all being shown as private lands. How did this transformation occur so fast? Did someone manipulate the data? Or did the Government convert all these lands to private persons in a jiffy? The CWC is now trying to ascertain the reason for this change. These tough questions are unnerving the TDP.