GUNTUR: People’s representatives belonging to the YSR Congress staged an innovative continuous standing protest in the Guntur Zilla Parishad general body meeting on Friday seeking to resolve public’s difficulties due to demonetisation. Mangalagiri MLA A. Ramakrishna Reddy and other people’s representatives alleged that demonetisation had forced the public to stand in the long queues on the roads at banks and ATM booths.
Mr Ramakrishna Reddy alleged that demonetisation had helped the ruling party leaders and black money holders to excha-nge their illegal money into legal money. He alleged that despite passing of 50 days of demonetisation, the common public were still forced to stand in long queues and these queues killed some people. He held the BJP-led Union government and the Telugu Desam-led state government responsible for the currency crisis.
He raised issues of government hostels, students, women, self-help group and civic problems in the meeting and demanded to resolve them. He and other people’s representatives stood at the dais in a “standing protest” for three hours till the completion of the meeting. Addressing the meeting, minister for agriculture P. Pulla Rao said that the state government started procurement centres to purchase 50,00,000 metric tonnes of paddy, purchased 13 lakh metric tonnes till date and asked the farmers to sell their produce to these centres to get a good price. He announced the distribution of pensions in cash in January to the help the old-aged persons.
ZP chairperson Sk Johny Moon presented the Budget and the meeting congratulated famous poet P. Sivasankar for getting the Central Sahitya Academi award and N. Guruprasada Rao for getting the Bhasha Samman award. Only two MLAs of the TD against total of 12 and only one MLA of the YSRC against total of five attended the meeting. Telugu Desam MP of Bapatla, Sriram Malyadri, boycotted the ZP meeting expressing anguish over the absence of the invitation and information about the ZP general body meeting to him.
He said that though he was elected as MP from Bapatla parliamentary constituency of Guntur district and was representing the ruling party. but there was no official invite for the meeting. He said that he came to know about the meeting through newspapers. The MP boycotted the meeting thuogh officials tried to persuade him.
