Opinion: KCR takes winds out of sails of critics, jobs announcement is a masterstroke
Though buoyed by the huge success of the public meeting at Wanaparthy on Tuesday, the Chief Minister literally exercised ‘self-restraint’ and controlled himself from making the “big announcement” amid the mammoth crowd.
By A Saye Sekhar Published on 9 March 2022 10:10 AM GMT
Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has a style for everything – be it delivering a promise or a blow on the face of his detractors. Though buoyed by the huge success of the public meeting at Wanaparthy on Tuesday, the Chief Minister literally exercised 'self-restraint' and controlled himself from making the "big announcement" amid the mammoth crowd. He couldn't hide the exuberance in his opening remarks on the floor of the Assembly before announcing the state government's decision to fill the 91,142 job vacancies in Telangana. The Chief Minister announced that notifications for 80,039 jobs would be issued immediately, maybe on Wednesday itself.
Typical of the storyteller that he is, KCR narrated the sequence of events and circumstances that led the government to factor in several constraints like the undertakings falling in the Schedule IX and X of the AP Reorganisation Act 2014; the objections raised by Andhra Pradesh; and the delay tactics by the Centre in dividing the zones and confirming the same through Presidential Orders for Telangana under Article 371-D of the Constitution of India before firming up its decision to fill the job vacancies.
The Presidential Order provides for local reservation in the recruitment for senior positions like deputy collector, commercial tax officer and deputy superintendent of police. The extent of local reservation goes up to 95 per cent from the earlier 80 per cent. The Chief Minister said that 20% were reserved for locals by the earlier regimes, "an act of willful deceit to deprive the locals of their rightful opportunities."
"For TRS, politics is a task, not a game."
KCR's gripping narration, dotted with frequent barbs at the Opposition, sounded as if he was treating a chronic disease. Suggesting that the 'detractors' always politicised the pertinent issue of unemployment, KCR thundered, "For TRS, politics is a task, not a game." The Chief Minister, in saying so, has virtually taken the proverbial winds out of the sails of his 'detractors' as he said himself in his speech. Now TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy and the state BJP unit president Bandi Sanjay, who frequently talked about the government's apathy towards the unemployed youth, will surely feel politically asphyxiated. Their followers have already created a narrative that the Chief Minister himself would orchestrate petitions in courts of law so that the government could be "saved" of a huge financial commitment.
Interestingly, the government has calculated well in advance the economic burden it would have to bear and estimated it to be around Rs. 7,300 crore in the event of filling the vacancies. By regularizing the services of the 11,103 contract workers since 2014 into the government service, KCR showcased that he is concerned about all those who were deprived of their lawful opportunities.
The biggest shocker to his denigrators is the enhancement of the upper age limit for government service by 10 years. This has literally caught the Opposition off-guard. Now the new defences chosen by the decriers would all be seen as concocted and their versions, convoluted.
'Revenge is a dish best served cold'
If implemented effectively, Wednesday's Plan, coupled with Tuesday's budget, would surely renew a third term for KCR, who always emphatically talks about 'performance and deliverance'. He seemed to have taken a leaf out of Mario Puzzo's "The Godfather" and scrupulously followed the saying, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." For, this "employment" dish is served when the political atmosphere is still cold and there are no elections around.
