The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Naidu’s yatra enters Telangana

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Sunday, May 04, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Naidu’s yatra enters Telangana

K. Venkateshwarlu

— PHOTO: SINGAM VENKATA RAMANA

Seeking blessings: TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu breaking a coconut at Chinna Medaram in Nalgonda district on Saturday.

NAGARJUNASAGAR (Nalgonda DT.): As the Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu’s “Mee Kosam Yatra” entered Telangana on Saturday, he was flooded with complaints of no water, no pensions, no pavla vaddi and not enough subsidised rice.

Lambada women holding empty pots at Jana Reddy Colony on Sagar - Halia road, undeterred by hot sun, set the tone for his yatra in a region that is witnessing politically significant byelections in the next few days. “The colony is named after the Home Minister but he could not take care of their basic requirement. They have to trek long distance to get water even now. Is this development?”

Mr. Naidu asked them if they were getting enough subsidised rice, they shouted “no” in unison. Same was the case with pensions. Power supply too was erratic. “We will attend to all these problems when we come to power. Besides 12- hour free quality power supply to agriculture, we will supply 50 units free of cost to each household”.

Continuing his promises, at the next halt at Alvalaadda, he asked farmers not to repay crop loans, “till TDP comes back to power”. Responding to the common demand from this tribal belt, he said he would declare all “tandas”(tribal habitations) as special panchayats and giving all powers to them.

At Halia, a big trading centre on this stretch, Mr. Naidu lambasted the Government for not doing anything to control price rise.

“It would better for the Home Minister who represents the area to take on the blackmarketeers rather than booking false cases against the TDP workers”.

Referring to the steep hike in prices of cement and steel, he wondered how a Government that makes cement companies invest in a Telugu daily in return for favours, could rein them in. “Both the Government and the cement companies are colluding to keep the prices high”, he charged.

When a couple of youth tried to raise slogans of Telangana, he snubbed them asking them to do that in a TRS meeting and not in TDP one. He said may it be projects, roads, schools and even implementation of G.O. 610, it was TDP that was responsible for all the development in the region.

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