Harish Rao bats for referendum on power

Addressing a news conference here on Friday, Harish Rao said the Congress must come forward to make the forthcoming Assembly polls a referendum on the power issue.

Hyderabad: Tearing into the Congress leadership for taking a U-turn after first saying that power supply to the farm sector should be scaled down to three hours, Health and Finance Minister T Harish Rao said TPCC president A Revanth Reddy’s real agenda was to deprive farmers of free power.

Addressing a news conference here on Friday, Harish Rao said the Congress must come forward to make the forthcoming Assembly polls a referendum on the power issue. The BRS would go to the farmers with its pronounced stand of three crops a year as against three hour power supply to the farmers promised by the Congress. The BJP could can seek the people’s verdict on its avowed goal of fanning the flames of hatred pitting one community against the other, he said.

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One of the Congress leaders, K Sujatha had gone on record stating that former AICC chief Sonia Gandhi was against free power to farmers. Another leader Addanki Dayakar also preferred eight hours supply to the farm sector. The Congress in a way could spell out clearly its real stand on the farm sector power supply. It had nothing more to hand out to the farmers other than the three hour supply, he asserted.

Instead of admitting its guilt and apologizing to the farmers, the Congress leaders as part of their cover-up mission, were indulging in mud-slinging tactics targeting the BRS leadership. He recalled that the State government did not yield to the Rs.30,000 crore offer made by the Centre for implementing the power sector reforms by fitting meters to agriculture services.

The State government also preferred to forego a benefit of Rs.7000 crore per annum in the form of a hike in the FRMB cap offered by the Centre for implementing the power sector reforms.

Some elements were out to put the blame for the Basheerbagh police firing killing people on protest against hike in power tariff during the rule of N Chandrababu Naidu on K Chandrashekhar Rao. In the capacity of the then Deputy Speaker of the State, Chandrashekhar Rao had written an open letter to the Chief Minister opposing the hike, Harish Rao said, sounding a warning to the Congress leaders that any attempt to malign the image of the Chief Minister on this count would be counterproductive.

Taking strong exception to the threats held out to BRS leader Prof Dasoju Srravan by anonymous callers claiming to be supporters of Revanth Reddy, he condemned the attempts being made by the Congress leaders to silence those questioning them on their ill-advised moves.