HYDERABAD: The time has come to wage a joint fight, setting aside party ideologies, to unseat Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, was the message of leaders of all opposition parties present at the Telangana Joint Action Committee's Koluvulakai Kotlata (Fight for Jobs) meeting that concluded peacefully at Saroornagar stadium on Monday.
Terming the meeting a grand success, Telangana JAC chairman Prof. Kodandaram alleged that the administration was putting the future of youth at stake to benefit a handful of contractors. The TJAC has stated that it will submit proof in court of the police crackdown on activists and students in all districts from Sunday midnight, despite permission gran-ted by the High Court.
With the next general election in mind, Opposition parties saw the meeting as an opportunity to corner the TRS government. Senior Congress leader T. Jeevan Reddy alleged that Mr Chandrasekhar Rao had not thought about the Telangana cause until he was denied a Cabinet berth in the Chandrababu Naidu government in 1999. State-hood was achieved by the sacrifice of students and not because of Mr Rao, he said. There were high hopes that solutions to many problems would be found after the formation of Telangana, but this did not happen, he rued.
The TD president L. Ramana said the government had claimed that it had issued 72 job notifications in the last 40 months but it lacked the intent to fill the vacancies, he said. He exhorted jobseekers and youth to make use of their voting power to ensure the TRS government falls. He alleged that the Chief Minister was accused in many scams like land, sand and liquor, but sons of the soil like Prof. Kodandaram were being arrested and cases filed against them.
Senior CPI leader Chada Venkat Reddy called upon all political parties to unite and ensure that Mr Rao loses power in the next election. He said Mr Rao had no interest in filling job vacancies. He said while Telangana youth had no jobs, there are jobs for everyone in KCR’s family. Senior BJP leader N. Ramachander Rao said that the fate of the TRS government would be decided by unemployed youth and students in 2019. This successful meeting should act as an eye-opener for the administration to fill job vacancies on priority basis, he said, adding that all universities in the state had a shortage of faculty for a long time.
Former MLC Chukka Ramaiah and balladeer Gaddar echoed these sentiments in their speeches. Unemployed youth, women and students turned up at the venue in large numbers. A large number of police personnel were deployed in and outside the stadium to ensure no untoward incident occurred.
