Telangana government's 8,000-acre sale in soup

Congress chief official spokesman Dr Shravan Dasoju said the government was bowing to pressure from vested interests and said his party opposed the government move. “The TRS government’s decision is totally unacceptable to the people. It reflects the hypocrisy of TRS. During the TS movement TRS leaders opposed land sale by the Kiran Kumar Reddy government. KTR, Padma Rao and others staged a dharna in front of HMDA. Now the same TRS is becoming a land trader,” he alleged.

The TRS government is giving the lame excuse that it is not able to protect these lands from grabbers and is also unable to utilise it for constructive purposes, he said, “We can create anything, but not land. The TRS government’s move to sell the lands is mindless,” he said. “The Congress government created TS with a surplus budget of Rs 17,000 crore. But KCR’s policies has pushed the state into bankruptcy,” he said.

“The CM is spending crores on festivals, pushkaraas,” he added. He questioned the TRS silence on the land grabbing cases filed against Padmalaya Studio. “The TRS is excited over film actor Mahesh Babu adopting a village. But his family engaged in massive land grabbing. The same policy is being adopted in the case of actor Nagarjuna also.”

BJP spokesperson Pathuri Karuna too opposed the government move to sell lands.

“KCR said the government would get Rs 1,000 billion from the sale of land. Later it came down to Rs 500 billion and then Rs 100 billion. Now it says it will fetch only Rs 3,000 crore. Under whose pressure is the government acting,” she asked.

Senior Congress leader Kathi Venkatswamy said the TRS government has taken a complete U turn on the sale of lands. Dr Shravan said the TRS which talked about land grabbing in Hyderabad is now silent and not a even single acre has been taken back by the government.