Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s “criminal waste” remark in reference to the state’s engineering graduates has triggered a political firestorm, with opposition leaders and students accusing the government of being disrespectful.
The war of words between the chief minister and opposition leaders from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) escalated after engineering students rallied around the parties, seeking an apology from the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi.
Student associations and opposition leaders K.T. Rama Rao (KTR) and G. Kishan Reddy called the remarks derogatory and disrespectful, strongly condemning the Congress for failing to provide jobs to young people in the state.
“On every occasion, the Congress has used the youth for political gains. On the one hand, he asked the students to consume ‘Endrin’. On the other hand, it promised to employ 2 lakh graduates within a year of coming to power,” BRS working president KTR said.
“The fact that the Congress government has failed to fulfill the pending youth declaration promises is the real ‘criminal waste’,” he added.
He was referring to the chief minister’s controversial remarks early in July asking police job aspirants to “consume Endrin and die” after they requested an increase in police recruitment. Endrin is a highly toxic insecticide and rodenticide.
The BRS working president wrote a four-page open letter to Rahul Gandhi holding him morally and politically responsible for anointing Revanth Reddy as the state’s chief minister.
Union Minister Kishan Reddy slammed the Congress for outstanding fee reimbursements, alleging that the state government owed around Rs 10,000 crore in fee reimbursement arrears, with more than Rs 5,000 crore due to engineering students.
BJP MP D.K. Aruna also criticised the chief minister for his choice of words, saying such language was disrespectful to parents who spent large sums of money educating their children with the hope of securing government jobs.
‘Telangana Endrin Party’
As the political controversy escalated, unemployed youth in Telangana created a symbolic “Telangana Endrin Party” on social media platform Instagram to protest Revanth Reddy’s handling of job vacancies.
At least two joint action committees (JACs) threatened to form a variant of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in southern India, saying that the ‘Telangana Endrin Party’ could soon be a reality if the government did not keep its promise to recruit 2 lakh people in various government positions.
Tensions between the Congress party and various joint action committees in the state representing unemployed youth flared after Gaddam Venu, an unemployed young man, attempted suicide on Sunday in Telangana’s Khammam district.
Naming the chief minister and the deputy chief minister, Bhatti Vikramarka, Venu, who is currently undergoing treatment, said he took the extreme step after being unable to secure a job and provide for his disabled mother.
In a detailed letter, he said the delay in job notifications and repeated appeals to government officials that went unheard caused him significant distress.
The fact that the opposition leaders from the BRS and the BJP were not allowed to meet Venu soon after his hospitalisation further enraged tens of thousands of youth already protesting across the state.
The Telangana Police JAC (unemployed) staged dharnas at multiple locations in the state following the chief minister’s Endrin comment. This JAC comprises aspirants who are currently unemployed and awaiting recruitment exams by the state police department.
According to figures from the state Director General of Police, the department has 20,000 vacancies, of which only a little over 5,000 vacancies have been filled.
Durgam Harish, General Secretary of the District Selection Committee (DSC), told ThePrint, “The chief minister said he kept the HRD portfolio to himself to bring about large-scale reforms to the education and employment sectors.”
“With the DSC exams not being held for two years in a row, more than 10,000 jobs are waiting to be filled. How will the 100 new Telangana Residential Schools run if teachers are not appointed?” he asked.
The DSC is the nodal body for conducting recruitment exams across the state to recruit and post teachers in government-run schools.
Telangana has seven recruitment boards for government jobs. Job aspirants can apply when these boards release recruitment notifications annually, each with its own unique eligibility criteria.
Before the 2023 assembly elections, the Telangana Congress invited Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi and made a Youth Declaration.
It included 24 promises to students and unemployed youth. The key promises were filling 2 lakh government vacancies within a year, releasing an annual job calendar, a monthly unemployment allowance of Rs 4,000 for qualified jobless youth, fee reimbursements, and electric scooters for college-going women.
While the Congress says it has filled 60,000 jobs, the BRS says the government has only filled vacancies already notified when the K. Chandrashekar Rao-led government demitted office.
In May this year, the Telangana government raised the upper age limit for direct recruitment in state government jobs to 44 years, an increase of 10 years from the baseline of 34 years.
It issued an order stating that those unemployed at age 40 could be fully eligible for the general category non-uniformed direct recruitment posts overseen by agencies such as the Telangana Public Service Commission.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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