Minister for Roads and Buildings V. Prashanth Reddy has criticised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president J.P. Nadda stating the latter has been speaking lies every time he visited Telangana and instead of helping the new State in any manner he has been spewing venom.
Reacting to Mr. Nadda’s allegations made at BJP’s Nagarkurnool public meeting held on Sunday, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader said the former was repeating the same script again and again. He sought to know from the BJP president how much the Centre had contributed for the double-bedroom houses being constructed by the State Government.
Mr. Reddy explained that the Centre had given just ₹1,200 crore, while the State Government had spent ₹12,000 crore on double-bedroom houses. He stated that the State Government had taken up construction of 2,92,538 double-bedroom houses with an estimated cost of ₹19,402 crore and completed 1,92,725 of them with a cost of ₹11,853 crore.
Under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the Centre had sanctioned ₹2,390 crore for construction of 1,59,372 houses for poor living in urban areas with ₹1.5 lakh per house. However, only ₹1,201 crore had been sanctioned so far. The State Government was spending ₹8.65 lakh per double-bedroom house in Hyderabad and ₹5.04 lakh per unit in rural areas.
Similarly, for the construction of national highways the BJP-led Government at the Centre had spent just ₹19,000 crore in Telangana against ₹1.21 lakh crore sanctioned for the purpose. Even the ₹19,000 crore was from the toll tax, road cess and other cess collected from people in the State.
Stating that there was no comparison between the amount being spent by the State Government for farmers under Rythu Bandhu programme against the paltry assistance given under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi. Initially, PM-Kisan was given to 35 lakh farmers but it had come down to 29 lakh now with new conditions imposed every year. On the other hand, the farmers covered under Rythu Bandhu had gone up from 49 lakh in the first season to 70 lakh in the 11th season.
Against ₹9,000 crore extended by the Centre under PM-Kisan, the State Government spend for Rythu Bandhu a whopping ₹72,000 crore including the amount being given for the 11th crop season in a row. In a statement, Mr. Prashanth Reddy also ridiculed Mr. Nadda for stating that BJP, if voted to power, would scrap the Dharani online land records management system alleging that the BJP was intending to force the VRO system, the root cause of land related issues, on farmers again.
