Asserting that the ruling YSR Congress Party would make a clean sweep of all the 175 seats in the next assembly elections in the Andhra Pradesh, chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday challenged the opposition Telugu Desam Party to contest all the seats if it can without going in for alliance with any other party.
Reddy was addressing a rally at Tenali in Bapatla district, after releasing ₹1,090.76 crore under YSR Rythu Bharosa-PM Kisan benefiting 51.12 lakh farmers and ₹76.99 crore under input subsidy scheme for the benefit of 91,237 agriculture and horticulture farmers who suffered crop loss due to natural calamities in last December .
Calling the people as YSRCP’s “backbone”, Jagan said his government “had implemented 98.5% of its pre-election promises” and expressed confidence that the slew of welfare schemes being implemented by his government will help the party win all the 175 seats.
He challenged “whether the TDP, or for that matter Jana Sena Party (headed by actor Pawan Kalyan) had the guts to contest all the 175 assembly seats”. “They have no face to ask for votes. They are only envious of the credibility and political goodwill of the YSRCP. They are suffering from heartburn for which there is no medicine,” he said.
The CM asked the people to analyse the qualitative difference between the TDP rule which had “pursued a policy of plunder, stash and devour with the support of friendly media and foster son Pawan Kalyan” and “the present government which has been implementing plethora of welfare and developmental programmes for the economic prosperity of the people”.
“The state is witnessing a class war between the poor backed by our government and the capitalists backed by the opposition,” he said and asked the people not to get carried away by the misleading and false propaganda of the unethical TDP- Jana Sena combine.
Jagan claimed that in the last four years, his government had spent ₹27,062 crore and ₹1,911 crore under the Rythu Bharosa-PM Kisan and input subsidy schemes respectively. A whopping ₹1,45,750 crore was spent on various welfare schemes after YSRCP came to power, he claimed.
State agriculture minister K Govardhan Reddy and Tenali MLA A Sivakumar also addressed the gathering.
Hitting back, senior TDP legislator Nimmala Ramanayudu said Jagan was “hoodwinking people with false claims on welfare schemes”. “The amount he had released under the Rythu Bharosa scheme was, in fact, was released by the Centre under PM Kisan scheme, except that the Jagan government added another ₹ 2,000 per farmer. For that, the chief minister is making tall claims by releasing big advertisements in the newspapers,” he criticised.
Another TDP leader and former minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy said out of ₹1,090 crore released by Jagan under Rythu Bharosa scheme, the central government’s share was around ₹1,000 crore and the state government’s share was only ₹90 crore.
“The so-called welfare schemes being implemented now have been there since he came to power. In fact, the Jagan government had stopped the crop loan waiver scheme worth ₹3,500 crore, which was implemented during the TDP regime,” he said.
