Reserve 80 per cent jobs in SCCL to locals, demands Bhatti

ADILABAD: CLP leader Bhatti Vikramarka said the Congress aimed at creating ‘social Telangana’ against only one family getting all the benefits. He demanded that the state government reserve 80 per cent of jobs in the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) for locals.

He criticised Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao for his failure to stop opencast mining, while speaking to the media at Rebbena on the twelfth day of his padayatra ’ on Monday. He has covered 170 km in the erstwhile Adilabad district.

Bhatti said tribals had no rights except for voting in Telangana and regretted that they had lost their constitutional and traditional rights on ‘jal, jangal and jameen.’

He said that 64 minor and eight medium irrigation projects were taken during the tenure of Y. S. Rajasekhar Reddy in the erstwhile Adilabad district but many of them were not being utilised properly.  

The Congress leader appealed to the people of the erstwhile Adilabad to introspect on what they gained or lost in the last nine years. He highlighted the plight of the tribals in agency villages as they have been stripped of all their rights except for the right to vote.

He accused the BRS government of destroying Congress schemes that would have provided more financial resources to the people in the region.    

DCC president Vishwaprasad, Rathod Ganesh and Marsakola Saraswathi and others were present.