Remove all T Bill riders, says K Chandrasekhar Rao

Hyderabad: TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Tuesday demanded the Centre to remove all conditions imposed on Telangana in the Bill which was detrimental to interests of the region.

He particularly objected to the proposal to give the Governor control of some departments, the non-repatriation of 83,000 government employees who were “illegally recruited”, distribution of employees in proportion to their population, and the Rs 5,000 crore that the new government will have to spend on pensioners.

He also spoke against continuing power purchase agreements with private agencies, which he said would drain the Telangana exchequer. He was speaking after releasing the 2014 diary brought out by the Telangana Officers Association at Ravindra Bharati here.

He said the party was grateful to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi was giving Telangana state. “We will think about how” to repay the debt,” he remarked. Flagging issues that the TRS was opposed to,

Rao said. “Why should there be Governor’s rule on our heads? Are Telangana people useless? Can’t we deliver the goods? Can’t we rule? Why must there be one rule for 28 states and another for Telangana?”

Threatening to launch another agitation to secure Telangana its rightful share of funds, irrigation water, employment and other sectors, Rao urged the Prime Minister to ensure that demands of the region were met without strings attached.

“We are not opposing what is given to the Andhra people. Let them give one lakh crore more. But what will they give us,” he said. He asked government employees from Telangana to organise a round table conference, submit a memorandum to the Prime Minister in this regard besides organising a dharna at Indira Park after January 3.

“There are several issues which I don’t want to rake it up, but four issues (in the Bill) are dangerous and cause immense damage to Telangana. We will be permanently under economic pressure,” he said.

Rao said despite the government orders issued by Chief Ministers, 83,000 employees had been recruited into governmetn service in contravention of rules and not repatriated. He cited GO No 36 (24,000 employees) issued by Kasu Brahmananda Reddy in 1969 and GO 610 (59,000 employees) by N.T. Rama Rao in 1985.

The TRS chief said even the Nizam had set up a committee and framed the Mulki  Rules when there were objections from locals over recruitment of Kayasths and others from North India in the administration in 1919 and 1920; the prime minister, Kishan Pershad, was a Kayasth.

Rao said the party would not accept distribution of employees in proportion to population and pensioners which would cost Telangana exchequer Rs 5,000 crore annually. “We lost our jobs and we now have to feed their maternal uncles,” he quipped.

“At that point of time we lost employment opportunity and now we have to feed them from the coffers of Telangana. Why? What kind of justice is this,” he asked.

He said Telangana faced the danger of power crisis and huge expenditure and questioned the need to buy power from private suppliers from the Andhra region at Rs 11 per unit while supplying power from the region at Rs 2.40 per  unit.

“I have had asked retired IAS officer A.K. Goyal to go to Chhattisgarh to study the power situation. He called up and said Chhattisgarh was willing provide 3000 MW of power to Telangana at Rs 3 per unit. We will buy from them,” he added.

He said the likes of Lagdapati Rajagopal who supply power at high rates were worried because the PPAs may be cancelled. He said Union ministers like Kavuri Sambasiva Rao and M.M. Pallam Raju were providing wrong information to the framers of the Bill.

“If Telangana becomes a reality, we should have sufficient budget, revenues, jobs for children, water, good crops... we need to live. We don’t want to loot, but live through hard work,” he said.