Cong braces for onslaught against govt

​Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Tuesday announced that the party would launch a massive ‘application campaign’ against the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government in the State.

• The party to collect applications from farmers and students seeking clearance of loan waiver dues and fee reimbursement
• Rank and file of the party to be involved in the drive
• Application forms will be distributed among the party workers from October 13 to 18

Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan here, Uttam Kumar Reddy informed that the Congress would collect applications from farmers and students seeking clearance of dues of crop loan waiver scheme and fee reimbursement. The application, directly addressed to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, will be filled by farmers and students with specific details of their crop loan waiver dues or fee reimbursement.

“Congress workers will meet nearly 37 lakh farmers, 3 lakh women farmers who mortgaged their gold for crop loans and 14 lakh students across Telangana,” he said. While the application forms will be disbursed among Congress workers from October 13 to 18, the filled in forms would be collected from across the State from October 21 to 31. Entire rank and file of the Congress, including MPs, MLAs, MLCs and frontal organisations will participate in the campaign. These forms would be submitted to the Chief Minister, the Governor and also the President of India, he said.

Uttam Kumar Reddy slammed the TRS government for not fulfilling the promise of waiving off crop loans up to Rs 1 lakh. The TRS government has cleared only 61.2% of the total crop loan dues during the last 28 months despite the fact that farmers lost four consecutive crops due to drought and suffered extensive damage in the recent heavy rains and floods.

The TPCC chief also informed that Congress workers, in collaboration with NSUI and Youth Congress, would approach about 14 lakh students who were badly hit due to non-clearance of fee reimbursement dues. He said the State government did not clear even 25 percent of fee reimbursement dues of 2015-16 while not a single paisa had been released for the academic year 2016-17. He said managements of private colleges were unable to pay salaries to lecturers and other staff and consequently the standard of education in Telangana had gone down.

Uttam Kumar Reddy also informed that the Congress would conduct its own enumeration of crop losses due to recent heavy rains. He said the enumeration done by the State government was erroneous and far from reality. For strange reasons, he said, the State government was trying to downplay the tragedy. However, he said the Congress workers would visit all the affected areas from October 5 to 8 and conduct a genuine enumeration of crop losses.

Uttam Kumar Reddy also said the Congress would organise Rajiv Sadbhavana Yatra on October 19 at Charminar. AICC Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has been invited for the event although his participation is yet to be confirmed. The TPCC will organise a public meeting in Karimangar on October 20.