Congress MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy said the address was a BRS election pamphlet. BJP legislator Eatala Rajender criticised the speech similarly.
Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan delivers her speech at the beginning of the budget session of the state legislature on Friday, 3 February, 2023. (Supplied)
The Congress and the BJP on Friday, 3 February, found themselves on the same side of the fence as they criticised the speech delivered by Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan at the beginning of the budget session of the state legislature.
Congress MP and former Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy described the address as an election pamphlet of the BRS, which is in power in Telangana.
BJP legislator Eatala Rajender also criticised the speech along similar lines.
Interestingly, Soundararajan has time and again been accused of batting for the BJP — of which she was a part before being appointed the Governor of Telangana.
It may be noted that the speeches that Governors across states deliver at the beginning of the first session every year are written by the party that is in power, and that is the BRS in Telangana.
File photo of N Uttam Kumar Reddy with Rahul Gandhi. (Supplied)
“The Governor’s address did not touch any problem being faced by the people, including rising inflation, unemployment, agrarian crisis, neglect of education and health sectors, and the deteriorating law and order situation,” Uttam Kumar Reddy said in a statement.
He said that the Governor should have made necessary amendments to the speech copy provided to her by the BRS government, but she did not question or verify the statistics, and delivered a misleading speech before the Telangana legislature.
He disputed the claim that Telangana’s revenue increased to ₹1.84 lakh crore. “The Comptroller and Auditor General of India and the 15th Finance Commission have pointed out that Telangana was showing inflated figures of growth by counting debts and loans as revenue.”
Uttam Kumar added: “Further, the claim of per capita income reaching ₹3,17,115 is also incorrect. According to the first multidimensional poverty index (MPI) released by the NITI Aayog, about 13.74 percent of the population in Telangana is multidimensionally poor.”
He also said that as many as 44.54 lakh people were surviving on a monthly Aasra pension of ₹2,000, which amounted to ₹12,000 per annum. “In this scenario, how could the per capita growth cross ₹3 lakh?” he asked.
Uttam Kumar also said that the claims in the Governor’s address on recruitment were not substantiated with facts.
The BRS government claimed to have filled 1,41,735 vacancies through direct recruitment while intending to fill another 80,039 posts, but there were only 3,00,178 employees as against the sanctioned post of 491,304 in different departments, as per the report of the CR Biswal-headed Pay Revision Commission (PRC), he said.
“It means that the government needs to fill 191,126 posts, and not just 80,039.”
Uttam Kumar also said that the Governor completely skipped the mention of the KCR government’s flagship scheme where 2BHK units were promised to 2.76 lakh families.
However, not even 20,000 of the promised units were delivered to the intended beneficiaries in the last eight years, he said.
The Congress leader said that the Governor’s address also did not elaborate on the Dalit Bandhu scheme and no deadline was mentioned for providing ₹10 lakh assistance to all 17 lakh poor Dalit families in the state.
BJP legislator Eatala Rajender echoed the sentiments when he told reporters the government’s claim in the address that it was providing round-the-clock power supply to the agriculture sector took the cake among all the “lies”.
“Transco Chairman D Prabahakra Rao himself had said that 24×7 power supply to the farm sector was not possible and that only single-phase power was being supplied,” Rajender said, pointing out that the farmers were waiting by their borewells in the middle of the night regularly, not knowing when they would get power supply.
Rajender also asked why the government was not able to supply power round-the-clock if its claim — that it had increased the installed capacity of power generation from 7,700 MW to 18,000 MW — was true.
The BJP legislator slammed the government for saying in the governor’s address that all was hunky and dory in the agriculture sector at a time when the farmers were ending their lives.
Like Uttam Kumar, he also pointed to the government not providing double-bedroom houses for the poor, as promised.
“Except in Gajwel and Siddipet, nowhere have the bedroom houses been allotted to the beneficiaries,” he said.
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