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Hyderabad: Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy exuded confidence that the Congress would comfortably win the Jubilee Hills bypoll scheduled for Tuesday, and questioned BRS supremo K. Chandrashekar Rao for not even making an appeal to the voters to elect the party nominee.Revanth Reddy was participating in a ‘Meet the Press’ programme organised by the Hyderabad Press Club here on Sunday. The Chief Minister reiterated that BJP’s candidate would have to forfeit his deposit and the defeat of the BRS, which was reduced to zero in the Lok Sabha, would prove once again that the party was a thing of past with no future.Maintaining that his political assessment was always correct, Revanth Reddy said his predictions of 64 seats for the Congress in 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi falling short of a majority and nil seats for the BRS in the Lok Sabha had proved correct.He said that elections to the Telangana Assembly would be postponed by six months and held along with the 2029 general elections as part of ‘One Nation One Election’ initiative of the Centre. “Mark my word, the Congress will come back and remain in power till 2034,” he added.On Chandrashekar Rao skipping the Jubilee Hills campaign, the Chief Minister said: “We leave it to wisdom of KCR. They may cite health reasons. But how should one understand KCR not even issuing a statement seeking votes for BRS,” Revanth Reddy wondered. “Has he lost hope? Is he fed up with his son KTR and nephew Harish Rao? He seems to be spending life in the farm house in agony.”Defending his extensive campaign for the bypoll, the Chief Minister said he had covered all the seven divisions in the constituency and interacted with voters to understand their problems first hand and make midway corrections in governance based on their feedback. Referring to his earlier exhaustive campaign in the Huzurabad, Huzurnagar, Nagarjunasagar and Munugode bypolls, Revanth Reddy said that as a committed party worker he would work for the party candidates in any election. “I have the mindset of a worker, not a leader,” he said adding that he would have gone on a door-to-door campaign too but for the objections raised by the security agencies.He announced the setting up of an Advance Technology Centre (ATC, upgraded ITI) in Jubilee Hills and said the government would study the feasibility of setting up a women’s degree college in the constituency.The Chief Minister said some of his Cabinet colleagues had identified works to be done in Jubilee Hills and the release of `500 crore was ordered to lay and widen roads, repair drains and hanging electrical wires among others. The government had issued 1,470 new ration cards and had been supplying fine variety rice to 2.39 lakh beneficiaries, providing free power up to 200 units to 20,000 households and subsidised cylinder to 25,000 families in the constituencyReferring to BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao’s allegations against Congress nominee Naveen Yadav, the Chief Minister said the BRS leader was focusing on a rowdy sheet registered long ago. “Paying KTR back in his own coin, Naveen is asking what KTR should be called, being the son of a passport scamster,” Revanth Reddy asked.
