Governor should have cross checked figures in her speech: Uttam

Hyderabad: Congress Lok Sabha member N. Uttam Kumar Reddy described the address by Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan to Telangana Legislature on Friday as factually incorrect and misleading.

"The address did not touch problems being faced by the common people, including financial crisis, rising inflation, unemployment, agrarian crisis, neglect of education and health sectors and deteriorating law and order situation," Reddy said.

The former PCC chief said that the Governor should have made amendments to the text provided to her by the state government. However, she did not verify the statistics and delivered a misleading speech, he said.

He disputed the claim that the state's revenue had increased to Rs 1.84 lakh crore when the CAG and the 15th Finance Commission had pointed out that the state government was showing inflated figures of growth.

Even the claim that the per capita income had touched Rs 3,17,115 is incorrect, Reddy said. According to the multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) released by NITI Aayog, about 13.74 per cent of the population in Telangana is multidimensionally poor.

Around 44.54 lakh people are surviving on a monthly Aasara pension of Rs 2,000. In this scenario, how could the per capita growth cross Rs 3 lakh, he asked.