VIJAYAWADA: Brushing aside the allegations that the YSRC government is vindictive, targeting BCs and has been pooling land by force, Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister Botcha Satyanarayana has said no one is above law and all irregularities during the past five years of the TDP regime will be brought to light.
Speaking to the media here on Saturday, the minister countered each and every allegation made against the government by the TDP leaders. “It was they (TDP leaders) who dared us to prove the alleged irregularities during the five-year rule of the TDP. Now, when a probe was ordered and report came out, they are crying foul and accusing us of vindictive,” he maintained. The SIT constituted by the government to probe the insider trading in Amaravati has sent chills down the spines of the TDP leadership, which only proves they are guilty, he alleged. He said the TDP has been crying foul that the government is vindictive and has been targeting BCs. “This is totally wrong and all are equal before law. When TDP was in the Opposition and I was a minister in the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government, the Volkswagen issue came up and they demanded a CBI probe and named me in it. We agreed for the probe and law had taken its own course,” he maintained.
Pointing at himself, he said he too is a BC just like Atchannaidu and TDP had not spared him, which was contradictory to its claim. He stressed that law does not differentiate between caste, creed, gender and religion. “When we pointed out irregularities in relief and rehabilitation works in wake of the Hudhud cyclone, the then TDP government ordered an SIT probe into the alleged irregularities from 2004 onwards. Now, they are questioning the probe into what happened in the past six years,” he said. Minister for Irrigation P Anil Kumar Yadav found fault with TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu for using BC card when the role of senior TDP leaders in the multi-crore ESI scam was exposed. YSRC MLA Kolusu Parthasarathy demanded that the terms of reference for the SIT should also include an investigation into role of Chandrababu Naidu in the “irregularities and hawala transactions”.
PM did not say ‘give contracts on your wish’
On ESI scam, Satyanarayana said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had directed the State to follow a system in granting contracts. The Prime Minister did not say to offer contracts as per one’s preferences, he said. The previous TDP government had constituted SIT to investigate Visakhapatnam land scam. TDP chief Naidu must speak on the financial irregularities of his former PA Srinivasa Rao before embarking on bus yatra, the minister said.