Naidu’s Game on Volunteers Boomeranged, Biggest Fool on All Fools Day: Botsa

Visakhapatnam: The Opposition parties game to prevent volunteers from distribution of pension to the beneficiaries boomeranged on Chandrababu Naidu, “making him the biggest fool on All Fools’ Day,” said education minister Botsa Satyanarayana here on Monday.

Addressing a press conference in Visakhapatnam on Monday, the minister said god would never forgive Chandrababu Naidu for his attempt to play with the livelihood of volunteers. “The volunteers are rendering a humanitarian service to the underprivileged sections of the society. Naidu sought to undercut this effort,” he noted.

The minister said this disruption was the handiwork of former chief election officer Nimmagadda Ramesh along with Chandrababu Naidu and his team. “They complained to the Election Commission and went to court to stop volunteers from distributing pensions at door-steps of the beneficiaries.”

Their plea was that the volunteers would influence the voters in favour of the ruling YSRC, he said.

“How can we replace the work done by 2.60 lakh volunteers who distribute pensions to 66 lakh beneficiaries,’’ Botsa asked.

He said there would be problems for three months. After the elections, the volunteers can resume delivering the pensions. The people would now understand the true intention of Telugu Desam and its alliance partners.”

The minsiter said that during Naidu's term, Janma Bhoomi committee members were selecting pensioners and they were giving it to women after the death of their husbands. “There was no transparency in their delivery system.”

“That is the reason people rejected Chandrababu Naidu and elected Jagan Mohan Reddy as their chief minister,’’ Satyanarayana said.

Speaking on changes in the school education system, the minister said the state government has taken a policy decision to run Plus Two classes in high schools. Each mandal would have two such high schools – one exclusively for girls and other for both boys and girls.

Botsa said he held a meeting with union office bearers and officials and discussed the need for introduction of this system in government schools when private schools were already offering such facilities. It was decided to make use of the system. For this, the government spent Rs 76,000 crore on building infrastructure in schools.

He said mandal education officers and school headmasters were asked to sensitize the parents to enrol their children in Plus Two in the same school after passing the SSC.