By admin 
Currently, the main debate in the politics surrounding the Vijayawada floods is on the retaining wall. A war of words is going on between the Telugu Desam party and YSR Congress party over who built this long wall built on the left bank of the Krishna river adjacent to vijayawada city and who built it and who is responsible for it.
There have been arguments in the past on the issue, but with the latest floods, there has been a controversy once again. This wall was built during the tenure of which government?
Why the retaining wall right here?
Prakasam Barrage is located near Vijayawada on the Krishna river. When water is released from the barrage during floods, the water reaches the areas under vijayawada city limits at the bottom of the barrage and adjacent to the left bank of the river. The intensity of the flood is such that the houses are submerged.
Krishna Lanka is an important part of it. Some other areas are also under threat of inundation. To prevent this, the government thought of constructing a high, long wall to stop the river water from entering those areas. That’s this retaining wall.
The wall was constructed to prevent the water from entering the area even though about 12 lakh cusecs of water was flooded.
Some families had to be evacuated for its construction. Already, ‘Wall’ has protected thousands of families from floods.
Before the bifurcation of the state
These wall proposals started during the Congress regime.
In 2006, when YS Rajasekhar Reddy was the Chief Minister, he issued a GO No. 1060 giving administrative permission to spend Rs 6.10 crore to build a 2.7-km long wall from Ramalingeswara Nagar to Yanamalakuduru in Vijayawada.
But the work did not move forward as the removal of encroachments could not be done to enable the construction of the wall.
After that, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation proposed to construct a small wall with their own funds.
The 600-metre-long wall (taken up with corporation funds) is meant for the protection of the municipal sewage plant near Ramalingeswara Nagar.
In 2011, when Kiran Kumar Reddy was the chief minister, the proposal for the construction of the retaining wall once again moved forward.
The Chief Engineer of Krishna Delta has sent a proposal to the state government in this regard. Vijayawada municipality has written a letter that it is enough for the state government to construct a wall on the remaining parts on both sides of the wall connecting it.
It has a distance of 2.1 km. The long wall has been proposed from Krishnalanka floodbank to Yanamalakuduru hill.
It was approved in October 2013 and the government issued an order sanctioning Rs 104 crore. A few months later, the united Andhra Pradesh was reorganized and two states were formed.
The Telugu Desam Party came to power in AP after the bifurcation of the state. Later in June 2015, the contract was bagged by a joint venture of two private firms (SEWs and PMPL). The contract is to complete the work in two years. In September 2017, the committee of engineers had suggested to the state government to increase the estimate of the works to Rs 138 crore as there were some deviations in the works by December 2016, after completing 40 per cent of the work.
In January 2018, the AP government issued an order increasing the estimated value of the works to Rs 138 crore. The entire wall work was then divided into three phases.