BRS serves legal notices on Congress leaders and a Telugu daily over farmhouse water claim

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has sent legal notices to three Congress leaders and to a Telugu daily. The notices accuse them of spreading a false claim that irrigation water from the Kondapochamma Sagar reservoir was diverted to former Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s farmhouse at Erravalli in Siddipet district.

The notices to the politicians were issued on 19 October by Soma Bharat Kumar, the party’s general secretary who heads its legal cell. They are addressed to Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president Mahesh Kumar Goud, Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy and Member of Parliament Gaddam Vamsi Krishna. The BRS has asked all three to retract their remarks and remove the related posts from their social media accounts.

If they do not comply, the party said, it may go to court, including with defamation proceedings. The party did not specify a deadline.

The report at the centre of the dispute

The row began with a report in a Telugu daily on 17 October. The report used satellite images of Panduranga Cheruvu, a lake of about 58 acres near the farmhouse, to argue that the lake was dry in 2017 and full by 2021, and alleged that it had been filled with Kondapochamma Sagar water meant for farmers. Kondapochamma Sagar is a reservoir built under the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme during the BRS government.

The BRS legal cell has separately served notice on the daily’s management and editor, describing the report as a false story about KCR and seeking an unconditional apology printed on the front page. It warned that the newspaper would otherwise face a defamation suit. The allegation has not been tested by any official inquiry or court.

What each side says

Bharat Kumar said the posts were intended to harm Rao’s reputation and to mislead people about Telangana’s irrigation projects. The party said it would not tolerate what it called baseless claims about the state’s irrigation infrastructure.

Congress leaders have not backed down so far. In a television interview, Goud described the matter as shameful and said it was good that the alleged scam had come out. He said KCR and his son K.T. Rama Rao must stop “misusing public funds” for their farmhouse, and urged the government to act. The daily, Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy and Vamsi Krishna had not responded to the notices by the evening of 19 October.

The daily is owned by Congress minister G. Vivek Venkatswamy.

Wider context

The water dispute adds to a running political fight over the Erravalli property. In September the Congress government ordered a survey of government land near the farmhouse and said it would issue notices to Rao’s family over land records, while the BRS has demanded that the Chief Minister’s own family face the same scrutiny.

Whether the BRS legal notices lead to court cases now depends on how the recipients respond. Any defamation proceedings would require the BRS to file a complaint or suit, at which point the substance of the water claim could be examined.

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