Weeks after Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced the controversial decision of providing schemes worth Rs 10 lakh for income-generation to all the 2,000 families in his native village Chintamadaka, the Congress has now demanded that the scheme be extended to all villages across the state.
Congress Legislative Party leader Bhatti Vikramarka said that he will soon write a letter to the Chief Minister demanding that the same scheme should be extended to all the families in the state without any discrimination.
Addressing the media on Thursday, Vikramarka said, “I welcome the decision to give Rs 10 lakh benefit for income generation to the villagers of Chintamadaka. Similarly, all the families in Telangana should get the same benefit. Everyone should be treated equally. If the scheme is restricted only to Chintamadaka, it would be unfair. It could lead to anger against the state and government. People might think that the Chief Minister only cares about the people close to him and could lead to disruption of peace in the state.”
Vikramarka said that the CM should soon start distributing the promised sum and further said that the Congress would launch a drive to identify beneficiaries eligible for the scheme.
Earlier in July, Chief Minister KCR had visited his native village Chintamadaka. Amidst much fanfare, he made an announcement that the government will allocate Rs 200 crore from the state budget to the village and the government would provide Rs 10 lakh worth benefits to each household, without any eligibility criteria, like caste or religion.
The Chief Minister had said that it was a sign of love for the village which had nurtured him as a politician. The next day, the government released an order on the same.
However, the controversial decision was slammed by the BJP. Calling the decision undemocratic, BJP national general secretary, P Muralidhar Rao, had said, “KCR is a Chief Minister of all the mandals and districts in Telangana. But he is speaking like a Sarpanch and offering special schemes like Rs 10 lakh to each family in Chintamadaka village. There are only 630 residences in the village. We are not against this scheme but we demand that the Rs 10 lakh scheme should be extended to all the families in the state. This is not democratic. Earlier, TRS party opposed what the Congress government had done and now it is doing the same.”