Early Saturday (February 22, 2025) saw an accident at the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel that apparently collapsed for approximately three meters, injuring roughly a dozen workers and trapping a few more. The injured were rushed to the TG-Genco hospital near Domalapenta in Nagarkurnool district.
The catastrophe occurred at approximately 8 a.m. at the 14 km left tunnel of the twin tunnel project, which was started in 1983 from the Srisailam reservoir side, according to information that has reached us and irrigation authorities who have quoted the employees of the working agency, Jaypee Associates. With the aid of a tunnel boring machine (TBM), more than fifty workers were involved in the tunnel construction. With the assistance of the police, the rescue effort was being supervised by the irrigation authorities from Nagarkurnool who hurried to the tunnel.
After expressing horror at the disaster, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy directed Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, Advisor Aditya Nath Das, and other senior irrigation department officials to head straight to the scene. In order to expedite the rescue effort, he also gave the District Collector, police, fire department, and HYDRAA authorities instructions to get at the scene immediately. Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy claimed to have received information prior to taking a helicopter to the scene of the accident that all employees had successfully evacuated and that just five were still inside because the tunnel roof had collapsed, causing mud and water to accumulate.
After a gap of about five years, work on the SLBC (Alimineti Madhava Reddy Project – AMRP) project has resumed on February 18 as the State Government has decided to complete the tunnel work by December 2026 to realise the objective of providing irrigation facility to about 4 lakh acres in the combined Nalgonda district and also provide drinking water to the fluoride-hit areas, about 200 villages, in the district.
In order to eliminate any possibility of collapse, the work agency has resumed the project by stopping the water seepage and reinstalling the tunnel’s completed liner.
According to the updated projections, the project’s anticipated cost was raised to ₹3,153 crore in 2017 and ₹4,637 crore in 2024 after receiving administrative clearance for ₹2,292 crore in 2005. To date, over ₹2,646 crore has been invested on the project. In order to take 30 tmc ft of guaranteed water from Srisailam reservoir, the twin tunnels were 44 km long overall, with 9.559 km of tunnel work still outstanding, according to the project authorities.
