Hyderabad: The Congress Party is annoyed at the outcome of a government sponsored poll that gives the party just two seats in the 2019 general election. Several Congress leaders slammed Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s poll survey results on Sunday and challenged him to order a snap election or byelections to the 30 Assembly and Lok Sabha seats being held by defectors who joined the TRS.
In separate media interactions on Sunday, the Congressmen said that the party is ready to face the challenge and gave the Chief Minister three options: to dissolve the Assembly and go for mid-term polls, or let there be byelections for the 24 Assembly and three Lok Sabha seats being held by defectors, or at least cause a by-election to the Sircilla Assembly segment represented by Minister K. T. Rama Rao and prove the survey is right.
The Pradesh Congress Committee president Uttam Kumar Reddy charged Chief Minister Rao with heading one of the most-corrupt governments in the country. He said the Chief Minister, by periodically releasing bogus survey results, is trying to cover up his “misdeeds” and failures. He has demanded that the Chief Minister disclose which agency was engaged to carry out the survey. He said the people are ready to dump the TRS in the next general election. Senior Congress MLA, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, demanded that the Chief Minister call for a byelection to the Nalgonda Lok Sabha segment from where Gutta Sukhender Reddy won in 2014 and then defected to the TRS. If Mr Gutta Reddy wins as the TRS candidate against him, Mr Komatireddy said he will quit both his Nalgonda Assembly seat and politics.
Shabbir Ali, leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, said it is surprising that Mr K.T. Rama Rao got 91 per cent in the latest survey whereas his constituency was awarded 46 per cent in a survey held just two months ago. “Did KTR create jobs for weavers or was Sircilla developed on the lines of Bhiwandi and Surat in these two months?” he asked. He said the CM’s address to the media following BJP president Amit Shah’s state visit clearly showed that he was going to lose in the next election as his performance is going down day by day in the state.
