‘Neeru Chettu’ bills worth ₹1,300 crore pending disbursal, allege TDP leaders

‘Bills of ₹1,498 crore pertaining to NREGS works have also not been cleared’

The YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government is deliberately keeping the ‘Neeru Chettu’ bills of contractors pending for the last three years only to politically damage the TDP and its supporters, allege presidents of TDP Kurnool and Nandyal districts Somisetty Venkateswarlu and Gouru Venkatareddy respectively.

At a roundtable organised here on Sunday, Mr. Venkateswarlu said bills worth ₹1,300 crore were pending in Kurnool district alone, and blamed Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy, who also hails from the district, for the situation. This apart, another ₹1,498 crore of NREGS bills for the works done in the past two years were also kept pending, he alleged.

As far as the ‘Neeru Chettu’ works were concerned, about 98 crore cubic metres of desilting work had been done creating a storage space of 98 tmcft, which irrigated 6.75 lakh acres in the district additionally, Mr. Venkateswarlu said, and added that the government had paid only ₹450 crore in the past three years and no efforts were made to pay the remaining pending bills

He gave examples of the villages where the funds were released, but the gram panchayat secretaries were asked not to release the amounts. 

As far as NREGS works were concerned, bills worth ₹1,500 crore had been released because of the intervention of the A.P. High Court. Bills worth ₹1,000 crore were still pending, the TDP leaders said.