Ponnala ridicules KCR’s claim on saving democracy

Former PCC chief says a man who encouraged defections and absorbed MLAs of other parties has no moral right to talk about democracy

Former Pradesh Congress Committee chief and senior leader Ponnala Lakshmaiah ridiculed the claims of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on saving democracy and said the man who encouraged defections and absorbed MLAs of other parties has no moral right to talk about democracy.

In response to the Chief Minister’s address at the BRS Khammam meeting, Mr. Lakshmaiah said KCR is good at spreading lies and always politically helps the party that he criticises the most. Everyone knows on whose agenda KCR was working, he claimed.

He said KCR floats ideas and promotes them as if they are working on the ground. It is reflected in the Dalit Bandhu scheme that was started for a by-election and will not move forward. Out of the 25 lakh Dalits in Telangana, a few thousand only received it so far making a mockery of Dalits. Similarly, after promising three acres to Dalits before the 2014 polls, KCR is now snatching the assigned lands given to Dalits by the Congress governments. The only vision of KCR is to find new ways to make money illegally, he claimed while speaking to reporters here on Thursday.

Mr. Lakshmaiah wondered how can KCR forget the contribution of Congress in creating the present India and making it self-reliant in foodgrains from scratch. India is the fourth largest exporter of foodgrains in the world exporting them to 128 countries. Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao is blind to these figures and talks about Congress doing nothing for the country.

He said Telangana was in a financial mess due to the inefficiency of the Chief Minister and wondered how a person who cannot pay salaries to State government employees on time was talking about the country’s development. Targeting the huge loans raised by the State government, he asked how can the Chief Minister, who has pushed Telangana into debt raising ₹ 5 lakh crore loans in the last eight years, speak on not raising loans.

Further ridiculing KCR’s claims on power plants and irrigation facilities, Mr. Lakshmaiah asked why didn’t the BRS government take up the Kanthapanapally project of 21 TMC storage capacity and 350 MW power production capacity. Instead, the Thupakulagudem project of just 9 TMC is taken up. He also charged that Kaleshwaram and Palamur Rangareddy lift irrigation projects were taken up spending ₹ 1.4 lakh crore and not even a single acre of land was irrigated with those projects so far.