Telangana BJP on Tuesday demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao cancel the contract given to a private firm for the maintenance of the Outer Ring Road (ORR) alleging that it has a questionable history and for offering a revenue which was 50% less for the next 30 years .
Dubbak MLA M. Raghunandan Rao, in the presence of spokespersons Ch. Vittal and N.V. Subash, charged that the tender process had been manipulated to give away the project to the firm which had earlier defaulted on payments for maintenance of the road.
The BJP leader claimed ORR gets an average of ₹1.80 crore a day as revenue from toll tax but awarding the contract to the agency shows that the revenue to be paid to the HMDA/Hyderabad Growth Corridor will be about ₹67 lakh only. Or, the revenues which should have been about ₹700 crore a year is now just ₹246 crore.
The entire tender process has been shrouded in mystery with no explanation about any study done and why a base price was not fixed as is done for such projects, he said and observed that the government could be getting more revenue if it took up the maintenance by forming a new corporation and making use of a bank loan as it had done many projects.
“It will be better to reduce the toll tax and benefit the citizens than give away the revenue to a private party,” he said and sought an explanation from senior officials concerned about how they had gone about the process. “We will approach the courts and all the investigative agencies like the CBI and ED to complain about the contract. We will continue to showcase it in the public domain till the government backtracks,” he said.
Mr. Subash, in a separate statement, sought resignation of Minister for Municipal Administration & Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao owning up responsibility for the tragic death of 11-year-old girl at Kalasiguda a few days ago. The government has utterly failed to save lives of kids when stray dogs had attacked them on the roads or preventing incident of children getting washed away in the badly maintained drains.
Meanwhile, TS BJP party president Bandi Sanjay Kumar in a statement criticised the government for ₹1,000 salary hike saying it is a pittance and promised to raise it to ₹2,000 if elected to power in the next elections.
