BRS, Cong have much to answer for

Listening to Uttam Kumar Reddy and Konda Surekha, Ministers in the newly formed Congress government in Telangana, during the recently concluded Assembly session, the words of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “Every word has consequences. Every silence, too…” rang through my mind.
Uttam Kumar Reddy intervened in the debate to counter Harish Rao, the finance minister in the recently ousted Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government. He categorically affirmed that neither any law nor the Central government – headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party – has ever recommended farmers pay for electricity provided for agriculture. The current Congress Minister further asserted that the earlier BRS chief minister, Chandrasekhar Rao, had lied on this issue and asked Harish Rao to stop repeating the same falsehoods in the Assembly. To bolster his assertions, Uttam revealed that he was a member of the parliamentary committee which drafted the law and knew the truth.
Similarly, Konda Surekha, the Endowments Minister, speaking in the Assembly, pointed out that it was the BRS leaders who, for purely political reasons, raised the flag of non-cooperation with the Central government. Due to their actions, the state could not utilise funds sanctioned by the Central government for Telangana’s development and welfare and, in some cases, had to return funds disbursed by the Center. She further pointed out that the BRS leadership was wrongly blaming the Central government for their misdeeds.
While the two Congress Ministers spoke the truth in the Assembly, they and their party were conspicuously silent earlier when the BRS government and leaders spread falsehoods against the BJP government at the Center. It was the state that had to pay the price for their silence.
The new government’s White Paper on the power sector puts the cost of agricultural power that the state government avoided paying subsidy at Rs 18,725 crore. If only Uttam Kumar Reddy and the rest of the Congress leaders had called the BRS government’s lies on “motors for meters” and insisted on accurate measurement of subsidised electricity supplied to the agriculture sector, the distribution companies would not be in the doldrums they find themselves in. But no.
Similarly, the Congress, which the state’s voters elected in 2018 as the principal opposition party, kept silent while the BRS party and its government lied about Central fund disbursements. Instead of holding the government accountable for not utilising and rejecting funds sent by the Center towards housing for the poor and improving facilities in government schools – to name a couple – the Congress was gleefully calculating political gains from the misinformation campaign launched by the BRS government against the BJP.
During the same Assembly session, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy personally held former minister Harish Rao, former chief minister Chandrasekhar Rao and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen  (MIM) MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi responsible for the vast unpaid electricity dues racked up in their constituencies. While unpaid bills stood at 61% in Siddipet, long represented by Harish Rao, they stood at 50% in Gajwel, represented by Chandrasekhar Rao, and at 43% in Hyderabad south, long represented by the MIM headed by Akbaruddin. The Chief Minister attributed the dire financial situation of power companies in the state to the high incidence of unpaid bills in these three regions and asked the three members to take responsibility.
Even in the case of the Chief Minister, the pattern was similar. The data on unpaid bills in south Hyderabad was available for a long time. The Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission (TSERC) made this data public at the beginning of the year. Videos of MIM leaders and residents of south Hyderabad assaulting and threatening electricity department officials who went to disconnect connections for non-payment of bills abounded on social media. Yet, the Congress kept silent on the issue due to its vote bank politics and to avoid displeasing a potential political ally, the MIM. Again, the loser was the state.
Of course, the behaviour of the Congress and its leaders changed once the party came to power in the state. The Congress rode to power promising to implement its “six guarantees” and other pledges like the 2 lakh farm loan waiver. Even when it made those extremely costly promises, it knew of the dire financial situation of the state’s exchequer. As we just saw, leaders like Uttam, Surekha and the Chief Minister were long aware of the data they marshall today. The Congress, like the BJP, made the heavy debt racked up by the BRS government a significant part of its campaign.
By its silence, Congress played a role in destroying the state’s public finances and power sector. It will have to bear the cost of its silence. It must refrain from using the ruse of the state’s dire financial situation to renege on its promises. The voters and the BJP will not cut slack for the Congress government because we are well aware that Congress, too, by its silence, contributed to the mess we are in today.