Uttam Kumar Reddy Lashes Out At Minister Jagadish Reddy

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President & Nalgonda MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy alleged that the TRS ministers were all emulating Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao in "deceiving the people", especially the farmers, through false propaganda.

Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Monday, Uttam Kumar Reddy described as unfortunate the Nalgonda incident wherein minister Jagadish Reddy used unparliamentary language and resorted to personal attacks on him during an argument when he (Uttam Kumar Reddy) had just questioned the status of the crop loan waiver scheme and paddy procurement.

Jagadish Reddy even forgot that he was a minister, Uttam Kumar Reddy claimed.

He said that he himself had served as a minister in undivided Andhra Pradesh, and had never indulged in such behaviour.

He claimed that the TRS ministers had become habitual liars and spoke in deceptive tones to protect themselves from accountability and any kind of criticism.

He also said that KCR and his ministers believed only in self-praise, and derived pleasure by making false claims.

"They close their eyes and assume that no one is watching them. They don't want anyone to identify their mistakes. They are in no mood to correct themselves. Making fake promises and false claims has become imbued in their culture," he alleged.

The TPCC chief asked why it was difficult for the state government to waive off the crop loans in a single take when the annual budget was Rs 1.82 lakh crore. He said that not even a single rupee of the crop loans had been waived after the TRS government took charge for the second term one-and-a-half years ago. He pointed out that the Congress government in Chattisgarh had waived off crop loans of over Rs 11,000 crore within hours after taking charge.

He also alleged that the TRS government had not waived off 100% of the crop loans even in the last term, and that only 80% of them had been cleared just before the 2018 elections.

Reddy alleged that the state government had been cheating the farmers on all issues. He said that the implementation of Rythu Bandhu had been erratic. He said that the scheme was meant to provide investment support to farmers at the beginning of the cropping season, but was being treated as a reimbursement scheme with the majority of farmers being paid money after the end of the season.

He also claimed that instead of 1.4 crore metric tonnes of paddy, only 50 tonnes had been procured, and of the Rs 30,000 crore earmarked for procurement, only Rs 10,000 crore had been actually spent.

He added that the farmers had a huge problem in selling cotton grown on nearly 4 lakh acres of land, but this time the state government was forcing them to grow cotton on nearly 70 lakh acres. He asked the state government to give a guarantee that the entire produce of cotton would be purchased before forcing them to go for the crop.

Reddy said that KCR had also made a false statement that Chattisgarh farmers were selling their crops in Telangana.

In closing Reddy lamented that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had granted statehood to the Telangana region as a gift to its people, but that except for those in the KCR family, no citizen had gained.