Sharmila: Naidu is taking credit for Polavaram canals built under YSR

Y.S. Sharmila opened a credit war over Polavaram on 3 September 2026. The Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president accused Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu of taking credit for canal works that, on her telling, were substantially completed under the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy.

Her locked claims run in a sequence. The YSR government gave administrative approvals in 2004 and allocated ₹2,680 crore. Land acquisition and major canal works, she said, were done before 2009. About 90 percent of the canal works, on her account, belong to the YSR tenure. The Right Main Canal and Left Main Canal works linked through the Purushottapatnam and Pushkara lift irrigation schemes are, she argued, YSR-era projects. The present government, she alleged, is executing only minor works while claiming the legacy.

She added a political charge about the Opposition years: that Naidu had opposed Jalayagnam and had reservations on Polavaram when he was not in office. That allegation is recorded as Congress speech, not as a documentary finding reproduced here.

Polavaram is Andhra Pradesh’s largest unfinished argument about water, displacement and political ownership. Every government that touches a canal package inherits both engineering progress and a credit dispute. Sharmila’s 3 September intervention is Congress’s bid to freeze the credit on YSR’s side of the ledger — approvals, allocation, land, and the bulk of canal civil works — and to paint the present Telugu Desam-led government as a late claimant.

What this desk will not do is invent a kilometre-by-kilometre completion certificate, a contractor list, or a rival percentage from the government that was not locked in the same facts file. The ₹2,680 crore figure, the 2004 approvals, the pre-2009 land and major works claim, the ~90 percent canal claim, the Purushottapatnam and Pushkara LIS linkage, and the “minor works only” allegation are Sharmila’s locked public case. Readers should treat them as a political charge sheet until the State publishes a matching or contradicting works ledger in the same window.

For farmers waiting on Polavaram water, credit ceremonies matter less than water in the channel. For parties, credit is the channel. Sharmila’s Vijayawada-day message is that the Congress will not let the present Chief Minister narrate Polavaram as a new construction story. The next move belongs to the government: either answer the 90-percent claim with works data, or leave the allegation standing in the public square. The public record for this edition stops at the filed facts above; this desk will not invent unpublished annexures.