Date:14/05/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/05/14/stories/2005051417590500.htm

Andhra Pradesh

BJP asks State Government to introspect

Special Correspondent

`No great achievements during one-year rule'

HYDERABAD: The State BJP has suggested that the Congress Government celebrate its one-year completion tomorrow not as `rededication day' but as the one devoted for introspection over whether it had fulfilled all its election promises or not.

Addressing a press conference, the senior BJP leader, Bandaru Dattatreya, said it was surprising that the Congress Government was celebrating the one-year event in a big way with no great achievements.

After criticising the TDP rule for spending Rs. 300 crores on publicity, the Government was doing the same and had spent Rs. 100 crores so far, most of it during the last few days, all to cover up its failures, he alleged.

Suicide by ryots

He contended that more farmers had committed suicide during the last one year than during the nine-year rule of the TDP.

Many of them did not receive ex gratia as promised. In Medak, families of only 11 of the 235 suicide victims received help.

Of the promised eight lakh houses, it was able to complete only 3.5 lakh houses.

He said corruption in irrigation tenders was such that contractors had been allotted Rs. 1000-crore work for excavating two canals for the Polavaram project, leaving the head works untouched.

The Government had failed to tackle the extremist problem. The separate Telangana issue had been kept on the backburner deceiving people of the region.

To a question, he said the State Committee had not yet decided on fielding a candidate for the Penukonda by-election.