Top leaders of Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rushed to the defence of Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan for her criticism of the TRS government’s handling of COVID-19 pandemic and claimed that she had expressed her views “as a doctor concerned with the health of the people”.
Former BJP president K. Laxman, city president and MLA N. Ramchander Rao, and P. Sudhakar Reddy among others charged that the K. Chandrasekhar Rao-led government has been trying to browbeat and intimidate the office of the Governor by making ‘wild allegations’ and attributing motives to the office though she is the constitutional head of the State.
Supporting the government and demanding an apology from the Chief Minister, Mr. Laxman said that instead of taking immediate corrective action to contain the pandemic, the TRS government has been using its MLAs to criticise the Governor.
“There is a pattern. When she wanted to hold a meeting with the Chief Secretary in the past to take stock of the COVID situation, the Chief Minister prevented officials from attending the meeting and thereby tried to undermine the authority of the office,” said Mr. Ramchander Rao.
The Governor had only repeated what the Telangana High Court had pointed out several times. The entire State now knows that TRS government has “miserably failed” to control COVID-19 and the people have become hapless victims to its criminal neglect, he claimed. TRS leaders were actually frustrated because BJP has been growing rapidly and therefore, it would want to attack the Governor’s office to deflect the criticism against government’s failure on public health and other issues.
The Telangana government has been a “total failure” in COVID-19 management and it was clear from March onwards, Ms.Soundararajan had only stated the obvious and “exposed the obvious” nationwide, said chief spokesperson K. Krishna Saagar Rao.
“She is also a doctor and had written several letters to the government about the pandemic containment but there has been no response. If citizens cutting across all sections are forced to fend for themselves during this public health crisis, what is the government for? It should answer the points raised by her,” he said.
