Congress seeks Central forces for Huzurnagar by-polls

Hyderabad: AICC Telangana Incharge General Secretary R.C. Khuntia demanded that the Election Commission of India deploy central forces for the Huzurnagar bye-elections to be held on October 21.

Addressing a press conference at Huzurnagar on Friday evening, Khuntia feared that the ruling TRS party might resort to electoral malpractices like EVM tampering, booth capturing, luring of voters with cash, distribution of liquor, harassment and illegal detention of Congress workers.

Therefore, he urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Chief Electoral Officer Dr. Rajath Kumar to deploy central forces at all polling booths in Huzurnagar Assembly segment besides ensuring proper surveillance. He said the District Collector and Superintendent of Police must be directed to immediately act on complaints of electoral malpractices.

Khuntia expressed confidence that Congress candidate Uttam Padmavathi would win the Huzurnagar bye-elections with a huge majority. He said there were multiple reasons to expect Congress victory in by-polls. He said Uttam Kumar Reddy had served this region for five terms as MLA and now he represents the Nalgonda Lok Sabha constituency in the Parliament.

Both Uttam Kumar Reddy and Padmavathi Reddy know the voters well and have been serving them since a long time. Further, he said people were vexed with the anti-people TRS Government and therefore, they would vote for Congress party to teach Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao a fitting lesson.

He said the TRS Government would not fall if the ruling party loses the by-polls. But if the Congress wins, then it would enable people to extract more work from the TRS Government. He said not only the people of Huzurnagar, but entire Telangana would gain from the victory of Uttam Padmavathi.

He alleged that KCR not only practiced unethical and immoral politics by indulging in horse trading, but also pushed the entire State in huge debt burden with his wrong policies. He said Telangana had inherited debts of nearly Rs. 60,000 crore at the time of its formation.

However, now the debts have increased to nearly Rs. 3 lakh crore. He said huge loans were procured at high interest rates by escalating the costs of various irrigation projects which were not required. He said the public expenditure was also increased due to proposals like shifting of Secretariat.

Khuntia said having full mandate was one thing. But manipulating the given mandate was a different thing. He alleged that KCR has manipulated the mandate to take wrong decisions like illegal dismissal of over 48,000 RTC workers.

This drove two employees to suicide while four others died of heart attack. Similarly, he said TRS Government was responsible for the suicide of 24 intermediate students who fell victim to marks evaluation scam.

He said that the Congress party was supporting the RTC employees and hoped that the State Government would follow the directives of High Court on resolving the RTC issue. He also demanded compensation for the families of two RTC employees who committed suicide. He said immediate measures should be taken to revive the RTC.

AICC Secretaries Bose Raju, Srinivasan Krishnan, Saleem Ahmed, Vamshi Chand Reddy, Dr. S Sailajanath, TPCC Working President Ponnam Prabhakar and other senior leaders were also present.