The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : TDP, TRS demand all-party meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 24, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

TDP, TRS demand all-party meet

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, NOV. 23. The Telugu Desam Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi on Tuesday demanded an all-party meeting on the issue of tenders for irrigation projects.

Addressing a press conference, the TDP leaders, C. Ramachandraiah, R. Chandrasekhar Reddy and G. Sukhender Reddy, charged the Government with making a desperate attempt to dilute and sidetrack the High Court order on the pre-qualification bids for these projects.

They pointed to the High Court observations such as, "We are of the view that the action of the respondents in waiving an essential pre-qualification condition in favour of the seven bidders qualifying them as pre-qualified tenderers is patently arbitrary, irrational, discriminatory suffering from malice in law and for that reason the selection of the seven bidders to be placed on the select list of short- listed pre-qualified tenderers is bad in law".

There could not be a more damaging comment on the system adopted by the Government, they said.

Yet it was surprising that the Government was busy issuing surrogate advertisements in the media to mislead people and give the impression that the Court had endorsed its method. The Chief Minister, Y. S. Rajasekhar Reddy, and the Finance Minister, K. Rosaiah, too were wrongly claiming that the High Court had set aside the system, on "minor technical grounds".

`False campaign'

At a separate press conference, the TRS MLA from Hanamkonda, M. Satyanarayana Reddy, and another senior leader, R. Vidyasagar Rao, demanded an all-party meeting to finalise region-wise allocation of river waters and irrigation tenders. They said the Government went ahead with laying foundation stones for projects without finalising the region-wise allocation of river waters, causing deep anguish among people of Telangana.

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