hyderabad
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has demanded that the Centre accord national festival/event status to biennial Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara at Medaram as it is known as South India’s Kumbh Mela.
Speaking after offering prayers at Medaram on Saturday, BRS MLC K. Kavitha stated that their party had been demanding national festival status to Medaram Jatara from day one of the State formation and the matter was taken to the notice of the Prime Minister and others at the Centre several times by the then Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, Ministers and MPs from the State.
While Medaram Jatara was neglected in the combined Andhra Pradesh rule, the Telangana government had sanctioned ₹100 crore funds for the arrangements in the first year (2014) itself and later ₹75 crore funding was provided every time. She requested that the State government ply more than 3,800 buses run by the previous government to Medaram as there would be a lot of inconvenience to pilgrims in the backdrop of free travel facility provided to women.
Ms. Kavitha visited Medaram along with MPs M. Kavitha and P. Dayakar, former Ministers Satyavathi Rathod, E. Dayakar Rao, former MP A. Seetaram Naik, former MLAs D. Vinay Bhaskar, A. Ramesh, B. Shankar Naik and others.
Earlier, speaking to newspersons along with other party leaders at Warangal, Ms. Kavitha said the exercise of seeking fresh applications for government benefits including the existing schemes such as social security pensions had created lot of doubts among people about their implementation as even the bank account details were not being sought.
She demanded that the government pay ₹4,000 each as social security pension to beneficiaries for December and January months together on January 1. People were already discussing about the non-receipt of Rythu Bandhu/Bharsoa benefit and also about the crop loan waiver promised by the Congress.
She criticised the issue surrounding the purchase of new vehicles for the Chief Minister’s convoy by the previous government, stating that it was the Intelligence department that would take the decision on such issues. She also sought to know how the Ministers could make baseless statements even before the judicial and experts’ reports were made on the Kaleshwaram project.
