Hyderabad, May 21 Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Working President K. T. Rama Rao on Wednesday slammed the Congress government in Telangana for failing to retrieve dead bodies from the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel in Nagarkurnool district even after three months.
A section of the tunnel roof had collapsed on February 22, trapping eight workers. The bodies of only two workers were found.
Rama Rao took to X on Wednesday to hit out at the state government for its "incompetence".
"In a fully functional government under a competent leader, in three months you could have brought back humans from Mars. But since it is Congress, they failed to even bring out dead bodies from the SLBC tunnel,” the former minister posted.
“Aren’t you ashamed Revant(h) Reddy?! Despite all the big statements and questionable deadlines, all you did since February 22nd was next to zilch,” wrote KTR, as the BRS leader is popularly known.
“At least have the empathy to put a condolence statement and meet the families of the deceased Revanth Reddy, apologise to them. Any half-decent human would have already done that,” he added.
The accident had occurred about 14 km inside the tunnel when about 50 workers were busy with digging work with the help of a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM).
Eight of the workers were buried under the debris while the remaining came out safely.
The body of Gurpreet Singh, a TBM operator from Punjab, was recovered on March 9, while the body of project manager Manoj Kumar of Uttar Pradesh was retrieved on March 25.
Sri Niwas (UP), Sunny Singh (J&K) and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu and Anuj Sahu, all from Jharkhand, are still missing.
The search for the missing workers was hampered by heaps of debris, seepage of water and slush. The bodies are believed to be buried in the last 50 metres of the tunnel at the collapse site, where debris has piled up to the roof.
Multiple agencies, including the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), and the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL), were engaged in the massive rescue operation.
The search operation was put on hold last month. A committee of experts recently concluded that the search operation can continue as long as safety precautions are taken.
The committee, comprising representative from the NDRF, the NGRI, the GSI, the National Centre for Seismology, the National Institute of Rock Mechanics, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), the SDRF, the Irrigation Department, decided that the NGRI should conduct a thorough geophysical study of the area around the collapsed section, and on both sides of the tunnel, to determine how further digging can be done using the drill and blast method.
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