Launching a scathing attack on Telangana's ruling party, TPCC head and MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy today alleged that TRS head, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, had been "negligent" and "insincere" about filling the many vacant posts in Telangana's government departments.
In a media statement, Reddy expressed his strong displeasure at the CM for "deliberately delaying the process of filling the 1.91 lakh vacancies on many pretexts".
Alleging that this was, in part, a result of the present condition of the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC), he pointed out that the 11-member committee, the constitutional body responsible for conducting exams for recruitment into the state's public service, was now "headless" as it had just two out of its 11 members left.
"The TSPSC is a barely-functioning body today. Its Chairman and three other members retired on December 17, 2020 after the completion of their six-year terms. Five other members had already retired by then. The TSPSC, therefore, has just two members currently. Out of these two members, the term of one will soon be over - his tenure will finish on March 11. It is not possible for a team of just two members to issue job notifications or hold interviews. They will not even be able to adhere to the requisite quorum norms while conducting any official meetings," the Congress leader said.
"Conveniently, the TRS government cannot appoint any new members to the TSPSC at this point since the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) has come into effect, as elections in two of the state's graduates' constituencies are to be
conducted soon. Even before the completion of the graduates' constituencies elections, the MCC will be implemented once again in the run-up to the Nagarjuna Sagar by-election and the elections for the Khammam and Warangal municipal corporations. Therefore, the process of recruiting new members into the TSPSC is not likely to begin for another six months, at least. The CM could easily have avoided this situation by appointing new members and a new Chairman in December 2020 itself. The lapse is telling however - it shows the KCR regime's insincere attitude towards filling the vacancies, and towards providing jobs to the people of the state," he added.
Further, Reddy claimed that it was "ridiculous" on the part of the CM to announce that the government would recruit 50,000 people in different departments despite knowing that the TSPSC was not even fully functional due to the vacancies in the body.
(The CM had issued a press release on December 13, 2020, stating that notifications to fill
50,000 vacancies in the state government would be issued soon.)
"KCR just made a false promise to secure electoral advantages ahead of the MLC elections in the two graduates' constituencies. He tried to mislead Telangana's unemployed youth once again with the promise of providing them with government jobs. However, the youth have now realised the TRS government's propensity to cheat them as it has been doing so since 2014. They are unlikely therefore to buy into the party's lies this time," he said.
To strengthen his argument, the TPCC head then pointed out that according to the report of the C R Biswal-headed Pay Revision Commission there were a total of 4,91,304 posts in different government departments in the state, but there were only 3,00,178 employees, and demanded that KCR publicly specify when and how the 1,91,126 vacant posts would be filled.
Ready also slammed IT and Industries Minister K T Rama Rao for "misleading" the unemployed youth by saying that the state government would soon fulfil its promise of providing
an unemployment allowance.
"The promise of an unemployment allowance was made by the TRS in its manifesto for the 2018 Assembly elections, three years ago. The dole should have been implemented immediately after the party came to power for its second term, in December 2018. After neglecting their promises to the youth and the graduates of the state for so long, the TRS leaders are now worried about the upcoming elections, and are trying to woo the voters with false promises yet again. Instead of doing all this, the government should focus on providing the promised monthly unemployment dole to the 30 lakh jobless youth of Telangana," he said.
Lately, the TPCC chief has been lashing out at the TRS regime quite regularly - just yesterday, he lambasted the government for
"oppressing" the BC community in Telangana