HYDERABAD: A Congress leader from Telangana allegedly rigged and manipulated the H-1B visa lottery scheme, which is part of America’s foreign worker employment policy. US-based media company Bloomberg has published an investigative story in this regard.
According to the report, Kandi Srinivas Reddy, Congress nominee for Adilabad Assembly seat, submitted multiple applications for H-1B visas for the same individuals under different company names to increase their chances of getting visas. He controlled several entities, such as Machine Learning Technologies LLC, Cloud Big Data Technologies LLC and others, with similar names and overlapping addresses.
As per Bloomberg, the companies controlled by Srinivas Reddy submitted numerous entries for the same workers, resulting in over 3,000 entries and securing hundreds of H-1B visas since 2020.
“After winning an H-1B, Srinivas’ company rented the workers on contract to corporations such as Meta Platforms Inc and HSBC Holdings Plc., visa applications show. The company’s advertisements claimed that it collected 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the worker’s pay, an amount that could reach USD 15,000 or more each year for a typical worker,” Bloomberg reported.
Srinivas moved to the US in the early 2000s to pursue a master’s degree. It is reported that he had strong ties with the politicians of Telangana. Before the 2023 Assembly elections, he sought a BJP ticket to contest the Assembly elections from the Adilabad constituency. Initially, he met a few BJP leaders, but later, he joined the Congress and secured a ticket to contest from Adilabad. He lost to BJP’s Payal Shankar.
Denies allegations, threatens notices
On the other hand, Srinivas categorically denied the allegations. In a statement, he said that some of his political opponents are conspiring to damage his reputation and business. He stated that he is conducting his business by taking all necessary permissions.
He said: “A few persons who are unable to face me politically are spreading lies. If anyone spreads wrong information regarding my business, I will send legal notices. We will complain to cybercrime police if anyone spreads wrong information on social media.”