Congress Condemns KCR's Threat To Shut Down RTC

Leader of Opposition in the Telangana State Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir strongly condemned Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao suggesting the closure of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC).

Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday, Shabbir Ali said, "Some government agencies cannot be judged just on the basis of the profits or losses that they make. The RTC gives free/concessional passes to students and other sections, operates buses in remote and rural areas despite thin traffic, and undertakes other services which are not profitable."

He said that instead of sanctioning special grants and taking other steps the Chief Minister had simply suggested that he would shut down the corporation, when it was the duty of State government to support the RTC to ensure that it continued to give better services to the people.

He added that the RTC employees had played a major role during the Telangana statehood movement, and that the State government therefore would need to take steps to resolve their grievances.

"KCR had praised the RTC employees and their role in the Telangana movement on multiple occasions. But when it came to helping them and reviving the institution, he is behaving in an autocratic manner by threatening to close down the corporation," he said. "KCR has no authority to shut down the RTC. He cannot play with the lives of over 55,000 employees. As a CM, KCR is only the custodian and not the owner of government institutions. The Congress will completely support the agitation to protect the interest of the RTC employees."

Shabbir Ali also demanded that the Telangana government either cancel the Power Purchase Agreement with Chattisgarh or revise the rates since Telangana was buying power at higher than market rates from Chattisgarh. Currently the market price was somewhere between Rs. 3.50 and Rs. 4 per unit, but Chattisgarh was charging Rs. 1 to Rs. 1.50 extra per unit. The Telangana government could lose Rs. 750 - Rs. 1,000 crores per annum if it bought power at these rates, and thus at least Rs. 10,000 crores if it bought 1,000 MW for 12 years as per the agreement.

He said that there was a shortage of power earlier but the UPA regimes from 2004 to 2014 had taken several steps to turn India into a power surplus country by starting 16 Ultra Mega Power Projects each having a capacity of 4,000 MW. Now those projects were getting commissioned one after the other and therefore no State in India would witness any power crisis in the future, he claimed.

Speaking about the country's second biggest flag being set up in Hyderabad, Shabbir Ali said that the TRS government had adopted an unscientific approach in installing the flag which had caused it to suffer damage more than four times in the last 15 days. "KCR is basically a single-headline CM. He does something, hits the headlines and then forgets about it. On June 2 he hosted a 291-feet tall flag. He knew it would make news. It did become a big story. But due to an unscientific approach, the flag was damaged due to wind in just four days," he said. He added that the central government should take action against the officials responsible for causing insult to national flag. Repeated damage to the national flag in such a short time was not a small issue and those responsible for the lapses must be punished, he said.