Medical Education Minister Kondru Murali Mohan on Wednesday criticised Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu for abstaining from the debate on the SC-ST Sub-Plan Bill in the Legislative Assembly.
Addressing a press conference, Kondru Murali Mohan said that Naidu's decision to skip participating in the debate on the SC-ST Sub-Plan Bill has exposed his "non-seriousness" over the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the state.
Further, he said, despite repeated appeals by Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy for unanimous support for the bill, the TDP members had tried to stall it by forcing voting on amendments on spending as per the SC categorisation.
The minister accused the TDP chief of adopting a dual stand over the issue. He said that Naidu speaks in a different tone in public meetings while his party members behave differently in the House.
He said that during the debate in the Legislative Assembly on December 2, the government had clarified that funds could be utilised as per the SC categorisation due to an order of the Supreme Court. "However, the TDP members had forced voting on the issue in the Legislative Council on Tuesday. This behaviour shows that the TDP was trying to draw political mileage out of the issue," he said.
Moreover, Kondru said that the TDP's objections would have had a meaningful impact if Naidu had attended the House himself. He said that the TDP chief was criticising the government on the issue by skipping the session. He said that he could have stalled his padayatra for two days to attend the Assembly session for the SC-ST Sub-Plan Bill.
The minister also alleged that the TDP and the YSR Congress party have a "secret understanding" with each other, and that both had tried hard to project the government in poor light over the Sub-Plan Bill.
"By making serious attempts to stop the Bill, the opposition parties have set a wrong example," he averred.
Kondru said that by ensuring that the Sub-Plan Bill is passed, Kiran Kumar Reddy, under the leadership of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had given Dalits and Girijans a new ray of hope. (INN)