Congress MLC and former Minister T. Jeevan Reddy has said that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao was showing Rythu Bandhu scheme as ‘Jinda Tilismat’ for farmers even while removing all the benefits that were available to them during the Congress governments.
Speaking to reporters here, he said KCR had abolished input subsidy and failed in the loan waiver scheme that were more beneficial to the farmers. Through the Rythu Bandhu the government was benefitting non-farmers more while abolishing all other schemes meant for genuine farmers. Earlier, Congress governments waived the farm loans while the farmers were helped through input subsidy, compensation of crop losses during natural calamities and huge subsidies through various schemes.
But in the TRS rule, all the schemes had vanished and farmers were losing three to four times of what they used to get under Congress governments. Rythu Bandhu support was not just a quarter of the support given by Congress to farmers, he argued. Ridiculing KCR’s claim of bringing in a ‘farmers government’ while launching the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), he said after denying farmers of Telangana all major benefits, the CM wanted to cheat farmers in the country. On BRS, he said KCR himself had agreed that he had no interest in Telangana after milking the sentiment for over two decades for his political rise and amassing wealth.
The Congress leader also questioned the soft approach of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in questioning TRS MLC Kavitha in the Delhi liquor case. He said Kavitha should have been given notice under Section 41 A and not under Section 160 CrP. At the same time, BJP leader B.L. Santosh was given notices under 41A by the SIT formed by Telangana in the MLAs poaching case. “She is being examined just a witness though the CBI claimed that she destroyed evidence, which is a big crime,” he said.
Mr. Reddy said the new Metro route announced by the government was to benefit the real estate dealers more than people. The route should have been extended through the old city and that would have been more useful to people. He said the Metro Rail to Hyderabad was a gift from late Union Minister, S. Jaipal Reddy when he was in the UPA government but KCR was behaving as if he had got the Metro Rail to Hyderabad.