Hyderabad, January 27:The TDP senior leader, Ms K Prathibha Bharati, has said that the State that was marching ahead on the path of progress and development during the previous TDP regime has become once again backward due to the policies of the Congress government.
Addressing a gathering of party workers on the occasion of the Republic Day on Wednesday at the NTR Trust Bhavan, she said the people should always remember the great sacrifices made by our freedom fighters who did not hesitate even to lay down their lives for getting freedom from the British.
Observing the Republic Day and remembering their sacrifices was the right way to pay homage to them, she said, adding though the country had attained freedom, people still languished in poverty and it would be real freedom for the country only when poverty was banished totally.
Recalling how late N T Rama Rao had launched the TDP for protecting the self-respect of Telugu people in 1982 and how the party stormed to power the next year, she said poverty was considerably reduced because of the schemes and programmes implemented by the late leader keeping welfare and development as the two main goals. She said that Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, who became the chief minister later, had implemented reforms which saw a rise in the government revenue.
She said that while the TDP government spent the increased income for the benefit of the people, the Congress rulers started indulging in corrupt practices and pocketed the money that was due to the people. She said though welfare schemes were being implemented with thousands of crores of rupees, people were still finding it difficult to meet both ends. Though scams worth thousands of crores of rupees were surfacing both at the Centre and in the State, the government was in such a helpless condition that it was unable to recover even a single rupee. She said that 2G Spectrum was an example to this pathetic situation.
The former Speaker has said that the Centre had repeatedly hiked the price of petroleum products, making the lives of the common people miserable. The governments had totally failed in controlling the spiraling prices, she added. Mentioning about the massive losses incurred by the farmers due to the recent natural calamities, she criticized the government for not coming to the aid of the farming community.
The party leaders, Mr Aravinda Kumar Goud, Mr Sudish Rambotla, Mr Teegala Krishna Reddy, Mr K Vijayarama Rao, Mr K S Ratnam, Mr T Narender Reddy, Mr TD Janardhan, Mr LVSRK Prasad and Mr Yusufuddin participated in the programme. (NSS)