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Telangana resumes tunneling work at collapse site
Telangana resumes work on the Srisailam Left Bank Canal tunnel after a deadly collapse, focusing on re-routing using advanced survey technology.
Five months after the roof of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel at Domalapenta village in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district collapsed trapping eight persons working on the project in the debris, and with six of the bodies yet to be recovered, the Telangana government has started work on completing the tunnel.
The 44-km long tunnel, which is expected to cost ₹4,600 crore , aims to transfer Krishna river water from the Srisailam reservoir to provide irrigation to four lakh acres in the erstwhile combined Nalgonda district besides providing drinking water to 516 villages en route, but work on it has been on a standstill since February 22, four days after work started on a critical 9.6 km long stretch of the tunnel at Nallamala.
On Saturday, state irrigation minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy took stock of the project in a high-level meeting. He directed officials to immediately resume the remaining tunnelling operations, including drilling and blasting. He said the re-routing of the SLBC tunnel work was being taken up using the latest electromagnetic survey technology in collaboration with the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) and the Geological Survey of India (GSI).
“In order to ensure precise planning and seamless execution, we directed officials to expedite the aerial LIDAR survey. We had a meeting with the NGRI scientists to finalise the technical modalities of the survey,” the minister said.
LIDAR is a remote sensing technology that uses lasers.
The resumption comes almost two months after the rescue operations were abandoned, people familiar with the matter said.
One of the people, a senior official familiar with the operation said on condition of anonymity that the rescue teams tried their best for nearly three months to retrieve the bodies , but gave up after a 43-m segment known as the critical zone, proved to be unsurmountable.
According to him, engineers from various specialised agencies who had inspected the tunnel, warned that this 43-m stretch was the most dangerous , and disturbing it could trigger another collapse.
“Realising the potential danger of digging further into this danger zone, the rescue operations were brought to a halt. In the last week of April, military forces drafted from the Indian Army and Navy to take part in the rescue operations were withdrawn due to escalating border tensions and the terror attack in Pahalgam on April 22,” the official said.
Senior IAS officer Shivashankar Lotheti, who was appointed as a special officer of the rescue mission at SLBC tunnel, was repatriated to Andhra Pradesh cadre in early July following a high court order and teams from Singareni Collieries and other agencies have also been withdrawn.
Congress MLA from Achampet Vamsi Krishna Chikkudu, who personally supervised the rescue operations regularly, confirmed that the rescue operation in SLBC tunnel mishap has been abandoned.
“Since there is no way the authorities could go ahead with the rescue operation and retrieve the bodies of the six workers, they stopped the operation a couple of months ago,” he said.
Chikkudu said the family members and relatives of the six workers were also informed that the bodies could not be retrieved. “The government also completed the formalities for declaring the missing persons as dead and paid compensation to the families as per the rules.”
The MLA said that the focus now is on finding out alternative methods to complete the SLBC tunnel project, bypassing the present tunnel route. “Surveys are being done at present to re-route the tunnel,” he said.
Out of the total length of 44 km of the main tunnel, a 20.5 km stretch was completed from Devarakonda end and another 14 km from the inlet end at Domalapenta.
With only a 9.6 km stretch of tunnel being left to be drilled from the inlet side deep in the Nallamala forest range, the tunnel collapsed on February 22 this year, within four days of the commencement of work.
On Saturday, Uttam Kumar Reddy announced that General Harpal Singh, former Engineer-in-Chief of the Indian Army, would soon be appointed as an advisor to strengthen the department’s technical capacity and execution capabilities.
