Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Dr. Chinta Mohan has maintained that the Congress party alone can ensure justice to ‘beleagured’ Andhra Pradesh as both the regional parties—YSR Congress Party and Telugu Desam Party—were vying with each other to back an ‘anti-people‘ Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre.
The Congress Working Committee Special Invitee made the remarks while addressing the media here on Friday. “While the TDP is desperate to have truck with the BJP in the next elections, the YSRCP is hand-in-glove with the saffron party at a time when gross injustice had been meted to Andhra Pradesh by the BJP-led government at the Centre which had miserably failed to implement the assurances made by the Centre to the State at the time of bifurcation,” Dr. Chinta Mohan said, referring to a recent meeting between Union Home Minister Amit Shah and TDP national president N. Chandrababu Naidu which he said was ‘‘much against the interests of the State’‘.
““If the Congress was elected to power in Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Ministership would be offered in turns to a person from the Kapu community as also from Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes”Dr. Chinta MohanCongress leader
He said the Congress party’s win in the Karnataka Assembly elections augured well for the 2024 general elections. Vexed with the ‘misrule‘ of the Narendra Modi government, people wanted the Congress party to return to power at the Centre in the general elections as well as in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the Assembly elections. “If the Congress was elected to power in Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Ministership would be offered in turns to a person from the Kapu community as also from Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes,” he said.
Referring to the Balasore train disaster, he said indiscriminate privatisation of Railways and other public sector units and outsourcing of staff responsible for manning various key services led to a “sorry state of affairs”. Over three lakh jobs remained unfilled in the Railways, he said, and alleged that the death toll in the triple train tragedy had been fudged.