Ruling party plotting to amass Rs 120 cr through textbook printing tenders, alleges TDP

Mangalagiri: The schemes of Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy to loot the State have been continuing in all sectors and the printing of books for schoolchildren is no exception, TDP national spokesman Kommareddy Pattabhiram said here on Sunday.

Perhaps Jagan Reddy is the only Chief Minister in the whole country who is amassing wealth in the guise of student books. This is the reason why five family members of Minister Botcha Satyanarayana are offered party tickets, he said. “When the Minister made it clear that he cannot bear the expenditure for five constituencies, Jagan has thus raised the curtains for this book printing scam to make at least Rs 100 cr to Rs 120 cr,” Pattabhiram alleged.

He pointed out that when the paper cost was Rs 1 lakh per tonne in 2022, the printing cost for each page was fixed at only 23 paise but now when the cost of the paper has come down drastically the printing cost has been escalated to 34.2 paise per page. The earlier practice was that the government was purchasing the paper and supplying it to printing press for publishing books but the Jagan Government has done away with this policy, he added.

The State government has totally ignored when the Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Paper Limited and the AP Offset Printing Association have mentioned at the judicial review that the cost of the paper has come down in the open market and that the government is incurring crores of rupees through e-tender, he said. Besides Botcha Satyanaraya, Principal Secretary Praveen Prakash and the Secretary to Chief Minister Dhanunjay Reddy have played major role in this huge scandal, the TDP leader alleged.

Pattabhiram said that the TDP demands that the tender be cancelled immediately and the State government purchase the paper in the open market to take up printing of textbooks on its own.