Hyderabad: Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Friday lashed out at Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) for backtracking on his promise of cleansing the Musi river at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore, and making Hussain Sagar’s water “as clean as coconut water.”
Sanjay was interacting with the villagers of Pedda Ravulapalli village of Bhongir constituency, which is affected by the Musi river pollution, as part of the Rachabanda programme on the fourth day of his Praja Sangrama Yatra.
The villagers explained their woes due to pollution of the Musi river, which they said, had contaminated even their food. The crops were getting damaged and the people were suffering from health issues, they lamented.
Sanjay wondered why KCR was unmoved by the plight of the villagers who were facing the loss of crops and suffering from health problems. He said that during the previous NDA regime, then Union home minister L Advani had released Rs 344 crore for the cleansing of the Musi river.
“After KCR came to power, he announced that he would constitute Musi River Front Corporation and allot Rs 4,000 crore for the same. He said he would also beautify the riverfront on the lines of the Sabarmati river. But he has not taken any steps in that direction. While he spent Rs 1.30 lakh crore on constructing Kaleshwaram only to bring water to his farmhouse, he did not spend even a single rupee on cleansing the Musi river,” he said.
Sanjay accused the KCR government of indulging in indiscriminate borrowing of loans through various corporations and looting the money, thereby destroying the state’s financial position. “The per capital debt burden has mounted to Rs 1.30 lakh,” he said.
He charged the KCR government with diverting the central funds and not implementing the central schemes – whether it was the free distribution of rice or the employment guarantee scheme. Though the central government released funds for Musi river cleansing, the state government remained a mute spectator when industrial effluents were being let out into the river, damaging the crops and health of the people, he alleged.
“Send a bottle of this Musi river to KCR. If he comes here, tie him to a tree and give him a bath with Musi river or clean him with phenyl. Hope at least then, he will realise the magnitude of the problem,” the BJP president said.
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