Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has described Kalvakuntla Kavitha’s dharna at Jantar Mantar over the women’s reservation bill as a diversionary tactic from the impending questioning in the Delhi liquor policy case.
Mr. Ramesh said the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) had supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Parliament on all the bills and it had never raised the women’s reservation bill earlier. Ms. Kavitha’s effort was to divert attention from her questioning in the liquor policy case, he said.
The former Minister said it was Congress that had, in 2010, introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha and got it passed. When it was introduced in the Lok Sabha the BJP did not extend support to it. The very purpose of introducing it in the Rajya Sabha was to keep the bill alive as it never gets dissolved. However, Mr. Narendra Modi despite his brute majority in the Lok Sabha could easily get the bill passed but was refraining. Congress was always committed and would be so, he said.
‘No tie-up with BRS’
The senior leader ruled out any alliance with the BRS in Telangana and said it was the Congress that was fighting the corrupt rule of the BRS. The BJP might feel it was growing but it was always the Congress that fought the BRS, he said. With regard to alliance with other parties, he said the PCC and the AICC incharges would take the call when required.
Going by the grievances it received from people over the discrepancies and malfunctioning of the Dharani portal (land records portal), Congress would reform it once it came to power. It would be renamed with the inclusion of all the columns, the removal of which from the land records had caused havoc as some names disappeared from the digitised records. “When we say we will abolish Dharani, it means we will set right the wrongs done by the KCR government and we will give back the rights of people who lost with digitisation in Dharani,” he said.
Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Bhatti Vikramarka said the Congress Guarantee Cards being given in the Dharani Adalats of the Congress was an assurance to people that their grievances would be addressed immediately after coming to power. “The assurance being given by the party itself is the sanctity and people have confidence in the party. We delivered Telangana after we promised,” he said.
AICC incharge Manikrao Thakre, AICC secretaries Ch. Vamshichand Reddy and Javed Nadeem, and TPCC vice president Chamala Kiran Reddy were present.
