BJP launches multi-frontal attack on BRS and Congress

Hyderabad: State BJP on Monday launched a multi-frontal attack on the ruling BRS, its ministers and the Congress party. Party chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar dashed off a letter to CM K Chandrashekar Rao demanding immediate release of pending pension dues of two months to the retired employees.

In his letter, he said retired pensions, who are senior citizens, face multiple health issues and need money. However, the government is not releasing pensions for the past two months; it is painful. He asked the BRS chief what happened to his promise to hand over all the retirement benefits to the employees on the day of their superannuation?

“The government lacks empathy for making retired employees make rounds of its offices for months to get their retirement benefits and pensions. In the Karimnagar district alone pension files related to 460 employees are pending with the Finance department,” he claimed. “Similarly, the current PRC time ends by the end of June 2023; yet, there is no sign of forming a new PRC. Bandi demanded immediate release of pending pensions and appointment of a new PRC.

Meanwhile, addressing the media, State party general secretary G Premender Reddy took the Congress and BRS ministers to task for making baseless allegations against Bandi.

Reacting to the Congress leader and former MP Ponnam Prabhakar’s statements, he alleged that some Congress leaders were on the payrolls of Pragati Bhavan. “Ponnam is making such statements to please Pragati Bhavan. Dubbing the Congress and BRS two sides of the same coin and best friends with the Majlis, Reddy said the Congress had joined hands with the BRS on several issues inside and outside Parliament. That apart Congress president Mallikharjuna Kharge and party leader Rahul Gandhi have said they would talk to the BRS. “The Congress leaders are failing to digest the reality of the BJP graph and popularity among people going up, Bandi Sanjay is creating ripples in State politics; the saffron party is emerging as an alternative to the BRS.”

On the stand of ministers Yerrabelli Dayakar Rao and T Harish Rao, he said Union Minister for Culture and Tourism G Kishan Reddy’s ‘Report to People’ was meant to disclose facts to people, but neither to the Congress nor BRS. “The report exposed how the BRS is merrily raising loans of lakhs of crores from the Central PSUs and commercial banks, but boasting about development while pushing the State into debt trap with no progress or change in living standards of people. He dared Harish Rao to come for an open discussion to disprove facts disclosed on State’s debt burden or resign for misleading people with “blatant lies.”

He said that details of State debt were disclosed since the CM and IT Minister KTR have time-and-again accused the Centre of denying and creating hurdles for Telangana to raise loans. While the Modi government has been taking concrete steps to invest in development of Telangana and to bring qualitative change in the living standards of the poor through various welfare measures, the BRS government has been obstructing their implementation, denying the benefits of the Central schemes to eligible poor, like housing, medical insurance and others. The neighboring State (Andhra Pradesh) has built 25 lakh houses and given them to the beneficiaries, but Telangana could not hand over even 40,000 housing units in the last nine years, he pointed out.