Polavaram Water Reaches North Andhra; Credit Arrives First
The canal carries Godavari water, while every government carries the project’s political surname.
On September 2, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu released Godavari water through the Polavaram Left Main Canal towards North Andhra. The government says the canal will eventually serve four districts, irrigate 2,87,320 acres and provide drinking water to 5.23 lakh people. Construction spending is reported at about ₹4,192 crore, with another ₹800 crore needed for the remaining works. That is a substantial public project, and water reaching people is more useful than another decade of foundation-stone choreography.
Naturally, the ceremony could not be allowed to remain merely hydraulic. Naidu described the Godavari crossing the Eastern Ghats, forests, rivers, streams and highways to reach Anakapalli, then promised its onward journey to Simhachalam, Arasavalli and eventually the Vamsadhara. The river has been given a political itinerary and, presumably, a media manager.
The YSR Congress Party has disputed the presentation. Its leaders, including Chelluboyina Venugopala Krishna and former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, allege that the water was lifted through the pre-existing Purushothapatnam scheme and released into the canal, rather than arriving by the gravity-fed route implied by the spectacle. That remains an opposition allegation, not an independently established finding. But it captures the grand Andhra tradition: the canal opens, and immediately begins a custody battle over the water’s surname.
Naidu’s government says Polavaram. YSRCP says Purushothapatnam wearing a Polavaram badge. Previous administrations, meanwhile, are summoned as co-parents whenever credit is distributed and as strangers whenever delays are discussed. The project has consumed decades, thousands of crores and enough political ownership claims to qualify as a separate irrigation command area. The public’s modest request is that the water reach fields and taps before the next leader arrives to explain whose idea moisture was.
The water has reached Anakapalli. The ownership dispute is still flowing by lift irrigation.
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