Hyderabad: A war of words broke out between Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Siddipet MLA T Harish Rao and Telangana women and child welfare minister Danasari Anasuya (Seethakka) regarding the delay in payment of salaries for gram panchayat workers.
On Saturday, January 18, Harish Rao accused the state government of delaying salary payment by four months to gram panchayat workers, by three months to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) workers, and by over a month to municipal sanitation workers in Telangana.
“Except for making trips to Delhi to save his chair and travelling abroad to claim thousands of crores of investments, there is not much achieved by CM Revanth Reddy,” the senior BRS leader opined.
Govt disbursing salaries: Seethakka reacts
Taking a strong objection to Harish Rao’s comments, minister Seethakka said that BRS did not have any moral right to talk about gram panchayat workers.
Questioning Harish Rao if he remembered how panchayat workers died by suicide when he was the finance minister, she reminded him of the ‘vanta-varpu’ (cooking) protest held by gram panchayat workers across Telangana on March 13, 2023.
She clarified that the Congress government was rectifying the mess left by the previous BRS government and regularly disburses salaries to nearly 92,000 gram panchayat workers every month.
Accusing Seethakka of playing a political blame game, Harish Rao claimed that during the BRS government ‘Palle Pragathi’ and ‘Pattana Pragathi’ monthly funds were released in the first week.
To assert his claim, Harish Rao, in his X post, added a newspaper clipping of panchayat workers protesting in Ramayampet town of Medak district and another incident from Lakshmanchanda mandal in Nirmal district, where sanitation workers were seen protesting against the delay in payment of their salaries.
Pointing out that only the BRS government had revised the pay of small workers and scheme workers to be on par with government employees during the pay revision, Harish Rao urged Seethakka to focus on ensuring the payment of salaries to gram panchayat and municipal workers instead of criticizing the BRS.
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