Palamuru ‘zero’ claim meets CAG tables

Congress minister Jupally Krishna Rao has been touring microphones to say the BRS did “nothing” for Palamuru and to scoff at the 90% claim on the Palamuru–Rangareddy lift. He even did the neat ₹25,000 crore vs ₹1 lakh crore routine — a crowd-pleaser, if you ignore the actual project record. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General’s audit of Telangana irrigation performance, the Mahatma Gandhi Kalwakurthy, Jawahar Nettempadu and Rajiv Bhima lift schemes were delivering irrigation during 2016–20 — years BRS was in office. The CAG table lists cumulative command area served in that period at 10,27,297 acres for Kalwakurthy, 3,28,278 for Nettempadu and 3,58,358 for Bhima. Those are not press notes; they are audited utilisation figures.

Now, if the Congress line quietly means “no project achieved formal, final completion across every component”, say that, show the package-wise status and we can all read it. The same CAG record notes several schemes as incomplete as of March 2016 — which is why definitions matter. But pretending “not one project” happened in the erstwhile district collapses the moment audited water delivery enters the chat.

On PRLIS, the BJP’s favourite heckle (“Where’s 90%?”) is also not a get-out-of-evidence card. The Irrigation Department’s own project note shows PRLIS is a multi-component scheme — reservoirs, pump houses, canals, ayacut — not a single dial you can flick to 90. A 2018 contemporaneous update from the project’s chief engineer said trunk works were underway while ayacut works awaited land, which is exactly why any percentage must be component-wise. If the Congress government in Telangana has better, current package numbers, publish them. Until then, “nothing was done” is a slogan in search of a spreadsheet — and the spreadsheet, inconveniently for the soundbite, shows water lifted and acres served under BRS.

The minister has not bothered to answer why the Congress script needs erasing audited irrigation to land its punch.