‘Fix your black magic first’: Revanth Reddy targets BRS

Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Saturday stepped up his attack on the BRS, alleging its leaders performed occult rituals to discredit the Congress government and questioning why they kept their temple visits secret.

Without naming BRS MLA T Harish Rao, Reddy said a former minister had visited temples in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to perform occult rituals, allegedly seeking a drought, farmers' distress and the collapse of the Congress government.

“Why did you not share details of your temple visits to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka on social media or anywhere else? Why did you keep them a secret?” he asked while addressing a public meeting after launching the distribution of smart PDS ration cards in Sangareddy town.

Reddy said Harish Rao should share details of the temples he visited and the occult rituals he allegedly performed.

BRS leaders were stooping so low for power that they were performing black magic seeking crises in the state, he alleged.

Reddy, however, said the Yellampalli project on the Godavari and the Krishna river had received water despite the impact of El Nino, claiming this showed that the Congress government's intentions were good.

Asserting that it was the Congress government's responsibility to provide jobs by conducting all competitive examinations, he urged the youth not to fall into the trap of BRS leaders seeking to provoke them.

The Congress government had filled 70,000 government vacancies within a year of coming to power, he said.

Reddy said his government had built seven lakh houses for the poor in two years and reiterated his challenge that the Congress would seek votes in villages where 'Indiramma' houses had been built, while the BRS should seek votes in villages where it had built double-bedroom houses.

He alleged that the BRS had failed to build the double-bedroom houses it had promised the poor.

The Congress government had transferred Rs 36,000 crore to the accounts of 70 lakh farmers under the Rythu Bharosa investment support scheme, he said.

The CM challenged BRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, popularly known as KCR, to a debate in the Assembly on the issue.

The state government was distributing more than two lakh quintals of fine rice every month through PDS shops to 3.48 crore people, he said.

He alleged that beneficiaries had not consumed the coarse rice distributed during the previous BRS regime.

The coarse rice was instead used as poultry feed, and in beer and ethanol production, he alleged.

There was no immediate reaction from the BRS to the CM's allegations.

On August 4, Telangana Congress president B Mahesh Kumar Goud had alleged that BRS MLA Harish Rao performed 'kshudra puja' (occult rituals) to prevent rainfall in the state in the hope of gaining political mileage from a drought.

Harish Rao had taken exception to Goud's remarks and issued him a legal notice.