Union Minister for Tourism, Culture and Development of Northeast and Telangana BJP President G. Kishan Reddy, on August 14, has expressed strong opposition to the ongoing auction of government and assigned lands for mobilising revenues stating that it is highly “irresponsible” ,”misuse of official machinery” and an “anti-people” act.
“The indiscriminate sale of lands is only to mobilise funds for the forthcoming elections. Instead of ensuring wealth is created, it is being frittered away. Even the assigned lands allocated for the poor and weaker sections are being snatched away for real estate deals by the BRS Government. It had secured ₹7,000 crore already and has plans to sell hundreds of acres which does not auger well for future of TS,” he charged at a press conference at the party office.
The Minister said the auction of lands and taking loans for works only exposed the “political bankruptcy” of the Government and questioned why a “rich” and “surplus budget” Telangana had come to such a sorry state of affairs under the stewardship of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
“Is this the model KCR wants to take across the nation? His administrative failures are quite apparent with his Government unable to pay even the salaries of the employees on first of every month as the TS has been pushed into a huge debt,” he charged.
Mr. Kishan Reddy claimed that no other State in the country has indulged in such kind of financial profligacy where the Government does not show the resolve to allocate land for two-bedroom housing for the poor or for taking up Central Government funded projects including land for upcoming Cherlapally terminal station or the proposed Nagulapally terminal.
“The Government had not even given land for having an approach road to Cherlapally station. It does not sanction land for a proposed Archives or a Tribal museum. But, it liberally hands over precious lands to big industrialists and to real estate tycoons through auctions. The BRS leaders had criticised the sale of lands before it came to power.,” he alleged.
The BJP president said his party will fight against the auction of sales and will also cancel the 11 and 10 acres given to BRS and Congress Parties, respectively, at Kokapet and Secunderabad Cantonment, if elected to power in the next elections. “The lands are worth hundreds of crores and allocation to the parties is illegal,” he asserted and added that lands acquisition for ‘Pharma City’ was riddled with “shady real estate deals to benefit the ruling party bigwigs”.
