Congress Accepts Harish Rao's Challenge On Free Power

The Congress today accepted the challenge of State Finance Minister T Harish Rao to face a referendum on the supply of 24-hour free power to the agriculture sector in the State.

Addressing mediapersons at Gandhi Bhavan, TPCC chief Revanth Reddy said that the party was accepting the challenge, and asked the minister to hold grama sabhas in all the villages to gather information from the farmers over the supply of free power.

He also asked Harish Rao to either accept his proposal to hold the grama sabhas or have his government resign.

He added that the ruling BRS leaders should not contest in the villages where 24-hour power supply was not being given, and that the Congress would not seek the votes in the villages where 24-hour free power was indeed being given by the State government.

Reddy also announced that the Congress would soon release electricity files to expose the "corruption and irregularities" of the BRS leaders in the purchase of the power.

Throwing a challenge to CM K Chandrashekar Rao directly, he asked KCR to contest from the Gajwel Assembly constituency in the upcoming Assembly elections, as also field all sitting MLAs of the BRS from their respective Assembly constituencies, if the CM was confident of his government's performance.

Refuting the allegations of the ruling party leaders that the Congress was opposing the supply of the free power, he claimed that the Congress had the patent over free power supply to the farm sector. He said that the Congress led by the then PCC president Y S Rajasekhar Reddy had included the promise of free power supply to the farm sector in the party's manifesto of 1999 itself, and that the party could not implement the scheme at that time as it did not come to power in the 1999 Assembly elections.

He also said that the Congress and the Left parties had fought against electricity supply problems during the TDP rule, and that three farmers had died in the exchange of fire during the protest held at Basheerbagh in the year 2000 during the TDP rule. He pointed out that KCR, Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and Council Chairman Gutha Sukender Reddy were all holding key positions in the TDP's rule then, and that it was these three leaders that had prepared the power policy of the Chandrababu Naidu-led State government then. He asked the three leaders whether it was not then the BRS that was responsible for the Basheerbagh gun fire which took place on August 28, 2000.

Rebutting the allegations of Minister Harish Rao that he (Revanth Reddy) was responsible for the Basheerbagh firing incident, he asked Rao how he could be held responsible for the incident when he had joined the TDP in 2007. He also alleged that KCR had formed the TRS after taking money from the then AP Minister Bojjala Gopala Krishna Reddy.