Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, on Friday, alleged that Telangana Rashtra Samithi government led by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had made the lives of common people “miserable” by abnormally increasing various taxes, power tariffs and state-run RTC bus fares.
Speaking to reporters after interacting with passengers of RTC buses, drivers and conductors at Jubilee Bus station, Secunderabad, he charged that KCR “doesn’t want the poor and middle class people in the state to lead a normal life with the recent indiscriminate hike in power tariffs, property tax, drinking water cess, value added tax on fuel and now RTC bus fares”.
TSRTC fares have been hiked five times in a span of three years, he pointed out and accused the Chief Minister of “robbing the poor of their only way of transportation by abnormally increasing the bus fares in the name of diesel cess,” hence, the cess has to be revoked immediately.
First, bus charges were hiked 25% after the RTC strike ended in 2019, then, a safety cess was imposed followed by a ‘round figure’ increase, the third was an increase in ‘Palle Velugu’ bus charges and the fourth was a rise in bus pass rates, the Karimnagar BJP MP noted.
He said that while it only cost less than ₹200 to travel from Hyderabad to Karimnagar by bus before 2018, now it costs over ₹300. The BJP leader questioned the need to slap the diesel cess on the public as Centre has reduced the excise duty on petrol and diesel reducing their prices by ₹15 and ₹17, respectively in six months.
“The KCR government is levying a VAT of 35.2% on petrol which is highest in the country, to earn ₹30 per litre,” he stated, noting that while petrol costs ₹94 in states like Punjab, it costs ₹110 in Telangana. About ₹65,000 crores has been collected by the state government in the name of VAT, he said.
Yet, the TSRTC employees are denied salaries on time with the five DAs pending as also pay revision committee dues. “Despite high fares, the public sector transport body continues to be in debt with valuable RTC property leased to TRS leaders and MLAs plus fleet reduction to 6,000 from 10,000 and increased private-run buses from 1,200 to 3,000, he added.
PM V/S CM
Later, addressing a meeting of party workers at Kukatpally, Mr. Sanjay Kumar said he was ready for a debate on the eight-year rule of KCR and that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on the aspects of employment generation, law and order, corruption and family rule.
“Our party has come a long way from two MPs in the Parliament and being accused of being an upper caste party where minorities like Muslims and Christains will not support and the weaker sections like the SC/ST and BCs will stay away. But, what has happened now, we are a majority in Lok Sabha with 303 MPs and have formed a government in 19 states because of the sacrifice of our founding leaders and cadre,” he said.
Mr. Modi’s development and welfare schemes has earned praise globally and support from within the country by providing corruption-free governance, he claimed and contrasted it with the situation in Telangana where KCR had cheated various sections unable to fulfil the promises made.
