Eatala Rajender dubs Singareni protest call as false propaganda

Hyderabad: Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender on Friday condemned the BRS party giving a call to protest against 'privatisation' of the Singerni Collieries during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit on Saturday.

Addressing the media here, along with former MP Konda Visweswara Reddy, MLA M Raghunandan Rao, he said it has become a habit for Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao to shift his inefficiency to others and create false and fake narratives. Eatala said the government ran away to discuss the issue in the Assembly and dared it to debate the subject openly.

He said following the Supreme Court scrapping 216 mining licences of the UPA regime, the Centre had brought an amendment to the Mines and Minerals Regulation Act (MMRD)- 1957 in 2015, and BRS had supported it. "The four-tier system brought in post amendment includes captive mine allocation for coal-based cement and Iron industry; direct allocation of mines without a tender process if 14 per cent of revenues are paid as royalty and through a tender process with paying four per cent royalty".

"Accordingly, the Coal India allocated for itself 116 mines. The Centre has allocated Naini, New Patrapad and Penagadapa mines to Singareni. The State government had purchased tender documents worth Rs 25 lakh for KK6 of 15.84 MT, Sravanapalli of 160 MT, Koyaguda of 119 MT and Sattupalli of 69.MT coal reserves. But, it did not participate in the tender".

Eatala asked why Singareni did not participate in the open action after 2019. Who do they want to favour? "How Arabindo Pharma Sarat Chandra Reddy could get Koyalagudem mines is an open secret", he quipped.

"At the State formation, Singareni had a reserve fund of Rs 3,500 crore in banks. Now it has a debit of Rs 10,000 crore. The State government ows Rs 20,000 crore to Singareni; Rs 17,000 crore is on account of energy dues and Rs 3,000 crore in coal dues.

He said KCR criticised the Andhra rulers for bringing 1.21 lakh jobs in Singareni down to 63,000 in United AP. But, after KCR came to power jobs came down to 43,000; but coal production increased from 51 MT to 65 MT. Eatala charged that 99 per cent of work in Singareni are being done by contractors.

In terms of wages, those working in Coal India are getting Rs 930 as daily wage as against Rs 430 in Singareni Collieries; this is rampant exploitation of workers, he said. He questioned the handing over of Tadicherla opencast mine to an entity called AMR.