KCR's second term as CM gets off to a wobbly start

Hyderabad: The year 2019 has been the toughest for Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao who had to endure many hurdles in the smooth functioning of the government.

The first year after K Chandrashekar Rao assumed office as Chief Minister for second term witnessed more stumbling blocks than achievements projected and anticipated by the pink party.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) under the leadership of K Chandrashekar Rao had registered a landslide victory by winning 88 seats, out of 119, in the Assembly elections held 2018 end.

In the first term of the TRS rule between June 2014 and December last, K Chandrashekar Rao was seen in a comfortable and confident role while delivering the best schemes to the Telangana people.

He succeeded in fulfilling the aspirations of all sections of people mainly farmers, poorer sections and government employees.

But the trouble started brewing when the State government found a big mismatch between the available financial resources and the required funds to implement existing and new schemes.

The first big failure was encounter when Rao, who claimed to be a farmer friendly Chief Minister, deferred the implementation of Farmers Loan Waiver scheme.

The government maintained that it found it hard to mobilise funds after the introduction of Rythu Bandhu / Farmers Investment Support Scheme and also Farmers Insurance scheme which put Rs 18,000 crore financial burden on the State exchequer in a single year.

The outcome of the postponement of loan waiver scheme was that farmers were denied fresh loans from the scheduled banks.Shortage of fertilisers in the kharif season also forced the farmers to the streets to stage protests.

Whereas in the Health sector, the government received brickbats for its failure in containing the Dengue deaths.

Unofficially, the State had reported the highest number of dengue fever deaths in the country. The High Court also took serious note of the issue and reprimanded senior officials in the Health Department.

The delay in the release of funds to Aarogyasri scheme was also termed as another major failure of the government in providing free timely medical treatment to the needy.

The shocking situation witnessed in 2019 was the Intermediate results fiasco which claimed nearly 20 lives of students. The results and the follow-up situation that occurred in the State drew nationwide criticism.

To make matters worse for the government, the TSRTC staff along with Unions took up State-wide strike which ended after a 53-day saga.

Although the Chief Minister succeeded in ending the strike through High Court intervention, the stir exposed the TS government's hidden agenda to privatise the public transportation in a phased manner.

In a bid to give a financial relief to the crisis hit RTC, the government has put heavy bus fare burden on the passengers. First time in the history of RTC, fares have been increased by 20 paise per km.

The main promises of the enhancement of Aasara pension amount, unemployment dole to educated youth, new Pay Scales for government employees and the release of funds to all welfare schemes in timely manner were not fulfilled due to economic slowdown.