T panel distorted facts

Hyderabad: The TRS on Monday accused the Srikrishna Committee of having distorted the facts in its report submitted to the Centre on December 30 on the Telangana statehood issue.
While the party ideologue and irrigation expert R Vidyasagar Rao is preparing a list of ‘errors’ that crept into the report in regard to irrigation facilities, Prof K Jayashankar is preparing a detail note explaining how the methodology adopted by the committee in arriving at various conclusions was “unscientific, incomplete and partial.”
According to Vidyasagar Rao, “chapter - 4 “ of the report says that in Telangana, irrigation facility was developed 713% while it was 390% per cent in Rayalaseema and 190% in Andhra region. If that was so then the irrigated area in Telangana should have crossed 1.4 crore acres since 1956.
But official records show that before merging Telangana with Andhra in 1956, the total land under cultivation was 20 lakh acres while now it has crossed only about 50 lakh acres. He said after the Jalayagnam was launched in 2004, as per the report, 6.15 lakh acres of land had come under irrigation in the last five years of which 60,000 acres was in Telangana. But the government records say that not a single acre has come under new ayacut as the projects taken up are yet to completed.
Another “major error,” they say was in regard to the seven lift schemes including Kalwakurthi, Nettempadu, Bhima, Koilakuntla and AMR projects. While these projects are on the river Krishna in Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar districts, the report said they were on the river Godavari.
He further pointed out that RDS (Rajolibanda Diversion Scheme) in Mahbubnagar was not getting allocated water from Krishna as per the Bachawat award as the government had diverted 39.9 tmc of water out of 70 tmc that was allocated for this project to Kurnool and Kadapa districts and also because the upper riparian state of Karnataka was utilising more than its share.
Jayashankar said the report showed the tax collection in Telangana as 8% in 2008-09 excluding Hyderabad while, according to official records submitted to the assembly by the then finance minister K Rosaiah, 80% of tax collection had come from Telangana including Hyderabad. While government never excluded Hyderabad for the purpose of tax revenue, the committee excluded it and hence this method was unscientific.
According to Jayashankar, since Andhra Pradesh was formed, the Telangana region contributed more than 45 per cent of income to the state exchequer through taxes. Official records also said Telangana was the highest contributor to tax revenue since 1956. For the first time, the committee report gave a different definition of tax revenue in Telangana.
Meanwhile, Telangana Employees Union decided to file a petition in the Supreme Court against the five-member Srikrishna Committee for distorting the facts and not considering the documentary evidences submitted by Telangana organisations on various issues to it during consultations.PI
Telangana employees union president and political JAC leader C Vittal said the Srikrishna Committee was wrong in its conclusion that the recommendations of the Girglani panel were being successfully implemented by providing jobs to Telangana people. As per the recommendations, a cabinet sub-committee, House committee and monitoring committee headed by state chief secretary should be constituted to implement them. But no such committee was constituted. Even the Presidential Order was not being implemented, he added.