₹200 crore on the Assembly steps. The unions say do not shift yet.

N. Chandrababu Naidu handed a ₹200 crore cheque to Veligonda oustees on the Assembly lawn on Wednesday. Farmer unions, the same day, said do not shift a family until the full rehabilitation is actually in the hand.

The cheque is a one-time settlement for 1,600 displaced families. With it, the government says it has paid ₹518 crore so far. Earlier, about ₹318 crore went to 2,557 families who built houses themselves. A June 27 release of ₹300 crore sits in that running total. One public account puts the families covered by the ₹518 crore at 4,157. The Chief Minister said the rest of the package would follow. Representatives who met him on the Assembly premises thanked the government. That is the official photograph.

The unofficial meeting was a round table. The Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangham, the Agricultural Workers’ Union and the Tenant Farmers’ Association resolved that evacuees must not be asked to leave their villages until compensation and rehabilitation are complete. Former minister Vadde Shobhanadreeswara Rao called the government’s approach hasty. Rythu Sangham State secretary K. Prabhakar Reddy, who moved the resolution, wants the actual vacation date treated as the cut-off for the R&R list, not an older paper date. He wants young people who turned 18 between 2019 and 2026 counted as separate families. He wants the left-out names found and added. Union president D. Ramadevi spoke. Irrigation engineer T. Lakshminarayana asked a ruder question: how do you send water to Veligonda when Srisailam itself is short, and the project lives on flood flows, and the canals to farms are not ready? Relocation before rehabilitation, he said, puts the displaced at risk.

The calendar behind both meetings is 22 August. That is the trial water release. Markapuram Collector M. Vijaya Sunitha has already told departments to empty the submergence villages — Sunkesula, Kalanuthala, Gundencherla, Gottipadiya, Chintala Mudipi, Katamaraju Thanda, Lakshmipuram, Krishnanagar, Akkacheruvu — without pressure, and to finish roads, water and power in the rehab colonies. Seven colonies are planned. Six have basic infrastructure. Vemulakota is the lag. Sunkesula residents have already blocked officials and said they will not go until the package is real. CPM’s Daggupati Somaiah has said more than two-thirds of households are still waiting, whatever the government says about direct credits.

Water Resources Minister Nimmala Ramanaidu calls the project a boon for drought and fluoride belts of the old Prakasam district. The foundation stone, he reminds everyone, was Naidu’s, in 1996. Jagan Mohan Reddy, he says, inaugurated it before it was finished. The coalition set August 2026 as the finish line. Head-regulator walls were done by May. A 5-kilometre tunnel stretch was benched. A 1,900-tonne, 175-metre tunnel-boring machine is nearly out; about 300 tonnes of debris were to go in five days. The R&R envelope he has named is ₹900 crore, of which ₹318 crore had been released when he last briefed. Name errors, he said, would be fixed online.

A cheque on the Assembly steps is not a colony with water. A trial on 22 August is not a canal to a field. ₹200 crore to 1,600 families is a real transfer. ₹518 crore against a ₹900 crore package is also a real gap. The unions’ line is the civic line: do not move the people to photograph a trial. Move them when the house, the road and the leftover compensation exist. Two days is not six months. A reservoir can wait for a completed R&R. A family that vacates first will not get a second negotiation.