TS Congress seeks take professionals

Congress leaders on Saturday appealed professionals to join the party to fight for their rights and discharge their responsibility towards the nation against communal and anti-democratic forces such as the BJP and the TRS.

Launching six new chapters of All India Professionals Congress at a private hotel in the city on Saturday, TPCC chief N. Uttam Kumar Reddy appealed to the professionals to break their silence on many issues confronting the state and the nation and said that the silence of intellectuals and professionals on key issues would be dangerous for the society. He said they should be a part of mainstream politics and raise their concerns against communal and anti-democratic policies, programmes of the respective governments.

He said the Congress is the only liberal and secular party in the country as such and professionals should therefore come forward and join it. He assured to arrange a meeting of the professionals with AICC chief Rahul Gandhi during his tour to the state.

Leader of Opposition in Assembly K. Jana Reddy said he too had joined politics from a noble profession like teaching and it is for the professionals to decide now on how to fight it out to get justice for all the problems being faced by the people in general and professionals in particular.

Mr Jana Reddy said that first generation politicians in the country came from many professions as it was their responsibility to join politics.

South India Professional Congress chairperson Dr J. Geetha Reddy said that already 400 professionals had joined the organisation and many more are interested to join it. The endowments department has been feeling the pinch of GST on ‘prasadam’. Though prasadam has been exempted from GST by the GST Council, the tax is still levied on the inputs used in prasadam.

Big temples in Telangana such as Yadadri, Basar, and Vemulawada have requested the TS government to pay the tax.

Endowments minister A. Indrakaran Reddy on Saturday wanted to know how much GST was being paid for prasadam so that the amount can be included in the TS Budget proposals for 2018-19 so that temples can be compensated.

He requested Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to impress upon the Centre that even the inputs must be tax-free.

“Prasadam costs have gone up by 50 per cent due to GST on ingredients used in their preparation. The temples are incurring losses on the sale of prasadam for rates lower than production costs. They are seeking financial assistance from the government to meet this burden,” Mr Reddy said.

After GST came into force in July 2017, the Yadadri temple increased the price of laddu by 25 per cent in October 2017.

A 100-gram laddu costs `20 from the earlier `15.