PCC chief dares CM to hold panchayat polls

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, DEC. 7. The APCC (I) president, Mr. M. Satyanarayana Rao, has dared the Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, to immediately order panchayat elections if he was so confident about the Telugu Desam Party's victory in the polls.

Talking to reporters here today, he said Mr. Naidu's tall claim that people were not with the Congress (I) rang hollow and exposed his fear of TDP being defeated in the elections. The best way to prove that he was not afraid of a debacle was to hold the panchayat elections without further delay.

Mr. Satyanarayana Rao said the Congress (I) was likely to forge an understanding with Left parties in the panchayat polls. Informal discussions were already in progress with Communist leaders. To a question, he said the list of AICC (I) delegates from AP was likely to be announced before this week-end.

The Congress (I) leader criticised the Prime Minister, Mr. A. B. Vajpayee, for his statement that the Ayodhya agenda was still incomplete and his clarification later that the demand for building a Ram temple was an expression of nationalist feelings. Asserting that the statement had dented the Prime Minister's secular credentials, he said the Congress (I) was opposed to constructing the temple at the disputed site.

Meanwhile, the PCC (I) spokesperson, Mr. K. Rosaiah, said Mr. Vajpayee was expected to speak in his capacity as Prime Minister and not to echo the philosophy of the RSS. His statement defending the Union Ministers, Mr. L. K. Advani and Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, chargesheeted in the Babri Masjid demolition case, was equally reprehensible, he added.

He flayed the Chief Minister for doing nothing to tackle the growing poverty and unemployment in the rural areas of the State. He said there was no point in Mr. Naidu talking of ushering in `Swarna Andhra Pradesh' when the rural masses were unable to get two square meals a day. It was not comprehensible why the Government was not implementing the Employment Assurance Scheme in the villages or putting pressure on the Centre to release funds to tackle unemployment.

At a separate conference, three Congress (I) MLAs, Messrs D. Srinivas, M. V. Mysoora Reddy and K. R. Suresh Reddy, demanded that the Government bail out farmers from their present distress by releasing funds collected from them towards market cess. Unless the money was ploughed back for their welfare at this critical juncture, farmers would refuse to pay the cess in future.

They regretted that the Chief Minister was donning the role of an Opposition leader by criticising the FCI and State Government officials for their failure to ensure payment of minimum support price to paddy farmers. It was ultimately he who had to resume responsibility for failure of the Government machinery.

The MLAs said they failed to understand why Mr. Naidu continued to support the NDA Government if he was really so unhappy with it on the issue of tardy procurement. They dubbed as a "drama" Mr. Naidu's visits to different marketyards to study paddy procurement because farmers had already sold 80 per cent of their stocks at low rates.

The A. P. Youth Congress (I) president, Mr. P. Sudhakar Reddy, said the youth wing would hold a State-level convention here on December 10 which would focus mainly on the farmers' problems and the Government's mishandling of the power sector. Congress (I) leaders from the Centre and State would attend.

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Section  : Southern States
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