OWAISI APPEALS FOR FINANCIAL AID TO POOR

The Hyderabad MP appealed to Prime Minister Modi to give immediate financial assistance to people of the poorest strata stuck in different parts of the country. “This may be the first such instance, but if poor people cannot get food, nor go back home – what are they to do?”

Sources in the state government took umbrage in the catch-22 situation they claimed to have found themselves in, given that managements of private hostels in Hyderabad forced these youth to vacate hostels and that they allowed them a one-time exemption because of “humanitarian” reasons. But most political leaders were scathing of the move, with leaders of different parties condemning the incompetence of the government, its brutality in handling the situation and its absolute lack of preparedness.

Telangana state BJP president and Lok Sabha MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar called it a “hasty act, which reflects the mindset of CM K. Chandrashekar Rao. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to people to stay wherever they were for 21 days, the CM allows people to be forced out of their rooms, gives them permits after they rush to in herds to local police stations, further augments the risk of Covid by large-scale violation of social distancing norms and inhumanly does not do it properly.”

He said that if at all the Telangana government had resolved to send back students it should have consulted the AP government first.

and coordinated it properly, by taking them properly to their native places after a medical examination and handing them over to the AP government so they could put them in home isolation.

Mr Bandi said it was not just a problem of AP students but also youth from several places in Telangana who were thrown out of hostels today. “Police herding them into buses, beating some of them – is this the way for a government to respond during a national health crisis?”

He said if Chief Minister Rao really wanted to handle the crisis, he would have constituted committees Assembly and Parliament Constituency wise with senior officers experienced in crisis management and made a minister in-charge to each committee. Instead of making concrete efforts, Mr Rao was making theatrical statements and puts up a tame show. If the state government has real intention to rescue the youngsters it would have been made arrangements in plenty of empty lodges available in the city and informed parents that their wards were safe custody, instead of allowing them to leave the city without proper prior arrangements with the neighbouring state.

TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the problem of youngsters stranded at the border was a humanitarian crisis that should be resolved by both state governments immediately. He said that since the lockdown period was fairly long, both governments should coordinate better so that parents should not suffer mental agony.

Congress working president and Malkajgiri MP A. Revanth Reddy said that the state government has handling the Covid situation in Telangana with immaturity ever since the first positive Covid-19 case was detected in the state.

Why did the state government allow students to go to their native places in AP without prior consultations with the government there? he asked. “Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao is competing with and trying to projecting himself as someone who is handling the Covid crisis better than PM Modi.”