Rama Krishna Sangem
BRS chief and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) for the first time warned his party MLAs against indulging in corruption in flagship scheme, Dalita Bandhu. KCR generally, he never loses his cool in party meetings, but at plenary held on April 27, Thursday, he gave a piece of his mind to the legislators.
“I have information about malpractices and corruption in Dalita Bandhu scheme at many places. I will not tolerate this kind of irregularities by our own MLAs,” he told them Dakuta Bandhu, is a scheme he introduced last October to give away one time grant of Rs 10 lakh for each Dalit family so that they become entrepreneurs.
KCR has received complaints that some party functionaries close to MLAs have collected up to Rs 3 lakh in advance from each beneficiary to include their names in the Dalita Bandhu scheme. The CM has collected this information from different sources – party channels and intelligence wings.
KCR focused his attention on nagging issue of groupism in several assembly constituencies, where there are more than one contender to the ticket. “I know who to give ticket and I will take the decision at the right time. Better leave the matter to me,” he said at the plenary. The CM made ministers of respective districts responsible for sorting out infighting.
Change of sitting MLAs
Going by KCR’s speech, it appears, he is considering changing some of the sitting MLAs who earned bad name for themselves as well as the party. He used harsh words like “I won’t hesitate to throw out of the party, if you fail to mend your ways”. This is an indication that unlike 2018, most sitting MLAs were re-fielded, a good portion of them may be axed.
After 2018, TRS won 88 MLAs and another 15 joined it from other parties. Of the 15 lost candidates, one – Jupally Krishna Rao – was sent out of the party recently. In remaining 14 seats, the problem is infighting is going on between the newly joined and the lost old candidates.
KCR will have to take a fresh view of the situation in each constituency and chose between them or allot the ticket to an altogether new comer. This review process will go on for another few months as the poll notification is expected only in October. How many of the newly joined will retain tickets is the question to answered later.
