By retaining waiver of agricultural loans up to ₹ one lakh and continuing construction of double bedroom houses for poor, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti president and caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao may have repeated just two components of the TRS manifesto for 2014 elections in the partial manifesto for the coming elections released on Tuesday but showed his penchant for bigger sops if his government was returned to power.
The 2014 manifesto of TRS had a wide range of promises spread across 36 sectors and the party claimed to have not only fulfilled all of them but implemented 76 more schemes for people. For instance, party sources point out that the investment support for agriculture up to ₹ 8,000 an acre annually which has turned out to be the main weapon of the party in the coming elections was not promised in the last manifesto.
‘Promises not kept’
Mr. Rao’s political adversaries argue to the contrary on party’s claims having fulfilled all promises made in 2014. They said government employment and financial aid of ₹ 10 lakh to the martyrs of Telangana which had been promised was never fulfilled in the term of TRS government. The 12 % reservation for STs was stuck in Central government though a resolution was adopted by the State Assembly.
Similarly, the promise of spending ₹ 50,000 crore for the development of SCs, employment to lakh people, irrigation facility to one lakh acres in each Assembly constituency, setting up of 10 new thermal power stations, NIMS type super speciality hospitals in all district headquarters and Hyderabad as global city with satellite townships all around were nowhere near implementation in four-and-a-half years; not to speak free and compulsory education from KG to PG.
Scoring points
Mr. Rao scored a point over the Congress by announcing unemployment allowance of ₹ 3,016 a month though not long ago he ridiculed the party’s claim to pay ₹ 3,000 a month if voted to power. In the same way, he went a step further promising free double bedroom houses in private lands despite drawing flak that the programme was a failure.
Though the rival parties cried foul about farmers coordination committees as nothing but pocket borough of TRS, the TRS chief went on to promise them an honorarium.
