Rama Krishna Sangem
All the BJP MPs and MLAs from Telangana have staged a 24 hour long protest demonstration against Revanth Reddy led Congress government’s failure to implement its promises to farmers. All the 8 MLAs and 6 out of the 6 MPs joined the dharna held at Indira Parka in Hyderabad on September 30, Monday. Union Coal Minister G Kishan Reddy and union minister of state for home Bandi Sanjay Kumar did not sit in the protest.
BJP legislature party leader Aleti Maheshwar Reddy launched the protest while all the 6 Lok Sabha members – DK Aruna, Etela Rajender, Aravind Dharmapuri, Raghunandan Rao, Konda Visweshwar Reddy and G Nagesh – sat throughout the day. Besides these MPs and MLAs, several other senior party leaders and office bearers of the party and affiliated wings too participated in the protest.
Interestingly, this is the first major protest demonstration by BJP since the assembly and Lok Sabha elections. The party drastically improved its vote and seat share in the state, there has been some criticism that the leaders have not been in the forefront in attacking the Congress government. The job of attacking Congress government has been taken over by the main opposition BRS, feel some BJP leaders.
Even at a party meeting chaired by BJP national party president JP Nadda, there was an observation that the state party leaders were not active enough to emerge as the main opposition in Telangana. In the membership drive too, Telangana has been going slow – as it enrolled around 10 lakh primary members against an ambitious target of 50 lakh – by October 15.
Farmers were let down
Speaker after speaker at this protest attacked CM Revanth Reddy for letting down farmers of Telangana, on many poll promises. Initially, the waiver of Rs 2 lakh loan to them was estimated to cost the exchequer about Rs 81,000 crore,later it was scaled down to Rs 50,000 crore and subsequently, the Cabinet project a bill of Rs 31 crore and finally, the government washed off its hands with just Rs 17,000 crore, said the MPs and MLAs.
“This is nothing but cheating farmers who voted for the Congress,” said they. BJP lawmakers found fault with the CM focusing only demolitions through a Hydra project led by a police officer. This Hydra is nothing but either forcing the rich real estate builders to pay the party or evicting the poor from their houses so that the land can be handed over to the rich builders, said the BJP MPs and MLAs.
