Hyderabad, March 18: With apprehensions being expressed over the safety of various dams in the state, the government has appointed five non-serving independent experts to the Panel of Experts for Safety Review of Dams.
Geological Survey of India (GSI) former deputy director-general V Balachandran (geology), former chief engineers K Nagendrappa (dam-designing), KV Subba Rao (construction) and MKV Sharma (gates), and KV Ramana Murty (hydrology) will be the members of the expert panel for a period of one year.
They will examine the safety of dams with regard to construction quality, design, and gates apart from checking the fitness of dams to bear the impact of natural calamities like floods and earthquakes.
The panel, headed by Central Water Commission’s former chairman MS Reddy, reviews the safety of all dams in the state from time to time.
Though the panel has been existing for several years, the government had kept the appointment of experts pending for over six months. Though it had been decided in July last year itself to include independent experts in the panel, the government did not appoint them. The chief engineer of the Central Designs Organisation had made a request in this regard in November last year following which the experts were appointed this week. Due to delay in the appointment of experts, the review of safety of various dams also got delayed, officials said.
—Agencies