Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Tuesday took potshots at his arch rival and BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, saying, “We celebrate Diwali with chichubuddi (flowerpots) but never heard of celebrating the festival with sarabuddi (liquor bottles).”
He was reacting to Rama Rao defending a party hosted by his brother-in-law Raj Pakala in a farmhouse in Janwada on the eve of Diwali and terming the police raid on it as politics of vendetta. One person tested positive for consuming drugs, and foreign liquor beyond permissible limits and a huge quantity of non-duty paid liquor was found besides gambling chips. “Every activity there was anti-social and yet KTR defends,” Revanth Reddy pointed out.
The Chief Minister also found fault with Rama Rao and former minister T. Harish Rao for criticising every move of the government. Maintaining that he made former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao politically irrelevant within 10 months of coming to power, Revanth Reddy said he would implement the second phase of his strategy through which Rama Rao and Harish would meet the same fate.
On the government dodging action against people involved in various scams during the previous regime, the Chief Minister said he was in no hurry to act till the judicial and vigilance probes into these scams came up with their findings. “Till then my focus will be on administration,” he said. “Be it Kaleshwaram, the power purchase agreements scams or the phone-tapping case, we go by the law,” he added.
Revanth Reddy defended accepting donations from Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited for the Skill University despite the Comptroller and Auditor General revealing the additional financial benefits the company accrued in violation of tender norms, stating that he did not accept any bribe like his predecessor and that the proceeds would go for the common good.
The Chief Minister dared the BRS and the BJP to name any other state which had filled 50,000 jobs and waived farm loans of Rs 18,000 crore within 10 months of coming to power.
Comparing his working style with that of his predecessor, he said that Chandrashekar Rao would not even cover 10 per cent of the beneficiaries of welfare schemes while he (Revanth Reddy) preferred implementation in saturation mode.
With regard to protests, he said different sections of people including Opposition parties, employees and youth were allowed to vent their anger because Congress government believed in democratic values. “But, these protests will not deter me from pursuing the government’s agenda,” he said, referring to conduct of DSC and Group I exams.
