Bathukamma festival will be celebrated at the India Gate with the Telugu people living in the nation’s capital, prominent personalities and even lady officers under the aegis of the Culture Ministry for the first time on Tuesday, said Union Minister for Tourism, Culture and Development of Northeast Development G. Kishan Reddy on Monday.
“We have invited all the Union Ministers and senior officials for the historic event and this will be a true celebration of the Telangana culture by the Central Government. This will be in tune with the Telangana/Hyderabad Liberation Day celebrations held earlier this month in Hyderabad where Home Minister Amit Shah hoisted the national flag and took a salute of a parade by the paramilitary forces,” he told a media conference in New Delhi.
In this context, Mr. Kishan Reddy, also the Secunderabad MP, said the very fact that the Majlis Party as well as the TRS Government had celebrated the day, albeit with a different nomenclature was “welcome” and it is “victory of the Telangana people” as it was not done despite the BJP demanding the same for the last two decades. To a question, the Minister said he had not invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Home Minister Amit Shah for the event but expected several of the Cabinet colleagues to attend.
Financial assistance
Meanwhile, the TS BJP called for the State government to implement a financial assistance scheme on the lines of the ‘Dalit Bandhu’/’Girijan Bandhu’ for the washerman and milkmen communities too. This demand was made when leaders led by the party president Bandi Sanjay Kumar and other including Rajya Sabha MP K. Laxman after they had paid rich tributes to Telangana martyr ‘Chakali Ailamma’ and recalled the erstwhile armed struggle against the Nizam’s rule.
The party has accused the TRS regime of mirroring the Nizam kind of rule which had hit different sections of society and urged people to take inspiration from the martyrs to vote out the government in the next elections. Mr. Laxman criticised the government for ignoring the demand for having martyr’s statue in the city.
Earlier, the party unit had taken up plantation of close to 55,000 saplings 25,000 booths across the state on the occasion of the Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya birth anniversary on Sunday.
