HYDERABAD: TPCC former president Ponnala Lakshmaiah said that the statement of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao that the cost of constructing the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation scheme (KLIS) had been recovered was misleading. “It just indicates that the election season has begun,” Lakshmaiah said.
“I had said on day one that Kaleshwaram is a useless project and if KCR is confident he should come for a discussion on it. The government should come out with details of the project cost. How much of it was borrowed? What is the interest being paid? What is the allocation made for it from the budget,” the Congress leader asked.
He said that the previous Congress government had taken up 33 projects as part of Jalayagnam but Rao had taken up four, just swindle money. He said the state’s debt had risen from ₹70,000 crore in 2014 to ₹5 lakh crore. “KCR does not leave his farmhouse and Pragathi Bhavan. KCR will be sent to jail,” Lakshmaiah said.
On the Chief Minister stating that Rythu Bandu payments would be impossible without the Dharani portal, Lakshmaiah asked how money was being distributed in other schemes. Listing the BRS government schemes which he said had failed to take off, Lakshmaiah contended: “All the schemes of KCR like free fertilisers, double bedroom houses, making a Dalit the CM and giving three-acre land to Dalits have come a cropper. He is launching new schemes to hide his failures.”
