YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) general secretary and Rajya Sabha member V. Vijaya Sai Reddy filed an application-cum-affidavit in the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking an intervention in the PIL filed by BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay for directions to the Central government and the Election Commission to hold political parties accountable for poll promises.
Mr. Vijaya Sai Reddy stated that India was declared by the Constitution as a socialist republic, and that being the case, the Central and the State governments were tasked with taking measures required to achieve the egalitarian goals set by the framers of the Constitution.
Towards this end, Article 38 encapsulated an important Directive Principle of State Policy, which says the State should strive to minimise the inequalities in income, and endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities not only amongst individuals but also groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations he said.
Besides, governments had, as some of their fundamental responsibilities, mitigation of health and education inequities and rural and urban disparities, he added.
“To achieve these objectives, the governments have to necessarily incur substantial expenditure, which are revenue in nature, and that the decisions on the type and the magnitude of interventions aimed at effectively addressing the core issues and alleviating the distress are within the purview of the elected governments,” he observed.
Without due regard to the goals of some of the government programmes, the petitioner (Mr. Upadhyay) had chosen to refer to them as freebies, Mr. Vijaya Sai Reddy alleged.
“Programmes that are devoid of any true purpose and are implemented only for the purpose of luring the voters should necessarily be termed as freebies,” he said.
However, painting the programmes of vast socio-economic importance being implemented by the governments to alleviate the prevailing distress with the same brush amounts to insulting their constitutional mandate, he observed. Unfortunately, the Andhra Pradesh government’s schemes such as Amma Vodi and Rythu Bharosa had been referred to as freebies with total disregard to their purpose and impact, Mr. Vijaya Sai Reddy observed.
