Vijayawada: In a strong retort to Telugu Desam state president K. Atchannaidu’s challenge for an open debate on development, housing minister Jogi Ramesh asked him to have this done in Kuppam, Tekkali, or another place.
Speaking to the media here on Thursday, the minister asked both TD chief Chandrababu Naidu and Atchannaidu whether they knew what were mentioned in their party manifesto from 1995 to 2004 and from 2014 to 2019. He slammed them for removing the manifesto from their party’s website.
The minister said that in the last four years of their rule, the YSRC had implemented 99 per cent of their poll promises.
Lauding Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy for implementing a series of welfare schemes and developmental works, the minister challenged the TD leaders to come with them to ask 44 lakh mothers about the Amma Vodi scheme, 64 lakh aged persons about social security pension, 80 lakh women and farmers on Aasara and Rythu Bharosa and 26 lakh persons about Cheyutha.
He took a dig at Naidu for reneging on his promise to waive off loans to nearly 80 lakh Dwcra women.
Jogi Ramesh said the YSRC had given away 31 lakh house sites in which construction of 21 lakh houses was in progress and flayed Naidu for opting for legal litigation to avoid allocation of house sites and houses to the poor.
He said the government would organise house warming ceremonies in R-5 zone in Amaravati soon despite the ruckus the TD was creating over the construction of nearly 50,000 houses there for the benefit of the poor.
In a separate development, water resources minister Ambati Rambabu lashed out at Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan for targeting Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy and other YSRC leaders. He flayed both Pawan Kalyan and TD chief Chandrababu Naidu for not having any house in AP and, instead, staying in guest houses. “After the elections, Pawan Kalyan would go back to his home in Hyderabad,” he said.
The housing minister also flayed Kanna Lakshminarayana and asked him to accept three challenges, by saying who killed Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga, who tried to kill him and whether he would sail with Naidu or switch his loyalty to some other party.
