The Congress today slammed the Telangana State Election Commission (SEC) and the TRS government for releasing the
schedule of the elections to be held in two municipal corporations and five municipalities in the state.
(The schedule was released by the SEC yesterday. According to it, elections for 66 wards of the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation and 60 wards of the Khammam Municipal Corporation will be held between 7 am and 5 pm on April 30. The counting will commence at 8:00 am on May 3, and the results will be declared on the same day.)
Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan, Congress leader and former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir charged, "It looks ridiculous that the SEC has released the election schedule just two hours after Telangana education department announced the
cancellation of this year's SSC exams and the postponement of intermediate exams in view of the current pandemic situation. Does this not expose the strange dual standards of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and his government? While the KCR regime has
shut down all schools, it continues to allow liquor shops to operate till late in the night even though the shops attract huge crowds and are possibly
potent sites of Covid-19 transmission just because such shops help it earn massive revenues."
The leader then demanded that the state government immediately declare a "medical emergency" in Telangana keeping in mind the
unceasing rise in Covid-19 cases and fatalities, and that it postpone the upcoming municipal elections as well.
"The TRS government has completely failed to deal with the Covid-19 situation. The state's hospitals, both private and government, are utterly overwhelmed by the sharp spike in the number of critical cases. They are facing serious shortages of space and infrastructure - there is a shortage of beds and ventilators. Many government hospitals do not even have adequate stocks of oxygen cylinders," he alleged.
Shabbir Ali then lambasted Health Minister Etala Rajender for his "false claims" about the ability of the state's healthcare sector to handle the pandemic. He said that Rajender did not have an inkling of the real "bed strength" in the state.
Citing an instance to bolster his claims, he continued, "A mandal-level Congress head from Kamareddy was admitted for Covid-19 treatment at a local hospital. The doctors there recommended that he be shifted to one of the bigger hospitals in Hyderabad. However, he found that the hospitals had no space to accommodate him. Although official figures claim that there are over 2,500 vacant beds in hospitals in the GHMC area, including 1,466 beds in the Gandhi Hospital and 806 in the TIMS, this is clearly not the case. Even though I personally spoke to the Health Minister seeking his intervention so that my fellow Congress leader could be admitted to a hospital in the state capital, my efforts proved futile. Such a state of affairs in the midst of a raging pandemic is downright shameful."
The senior Congress leader also accused the TRS government of hiding the real statistics pertaining to Covid-19 cases and fatalities as well as the state's healthcare infrastructure, and said, "Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is playing with the lives of innocent people by tampering with the Covid-19 figures. He is the only CM in the country who has not yet held any review meetings on the situation. His only focus is politics and retaining power. He is least bothered about whether people live or die."
"But his rule will soon come to an end as the people of Telangana have now begun to realise that KCR is a highly selfish politician whose only goal is to win elections. Therefore, this time, the people of Nagarjuna Sagar have decided to teach him a lesson by ensuring the victory of the Congress candidate for the seat, K Jana Reddy," he added.
Reiterating his demand that the upcoming municipal elections be postponed, Shabbir Ali asserted, "Our state needs to take a break from elections and any other activities involving large crowds and mass gatherings for the sake of public health and safety. Therefore, the elections in two municipal corporations and five municipalities, scheduled to be held on April 30, must be postponed."