Hyderabad/Warangal: Siva Prasad, 21, bristles at Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief Okay. Chandrashekar Rao’s promise of accelerating month-to-month old-age pensions from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 if the Telangana voters offers the chief minister a 3rd consecutive time period.
“This CM, who denies jobs to the youth, wants to hike pensions for our elders. Who needs such alms when an educated youngster in the family gets a good government job with a handsome salary?” asks Siva, a first-year MBA scholar on the Kakatiya College in Warangal.
Siva is one in every of lakhs of presidency job aspirants upset with KCR’s two phrases in workplace, accusing the chief minister of failing to counteract “inordinate delays in recruitment notifications” and “back-to-back fiascos including exam paper leaks”.
“Never in his speeches does the chief minister talk about us educated youngsters, our aspirations. He probably thinks we are good enough only for gorlu, barlu,” says Siva’s classmate Sai A., referring to schemes of the KCR authorities aimed toward distribution of sheep and buffaloes to farmers from marginalised communities at subsidised costs.
Siva is a first-time voter in Southeast Telangana’s Nalgonda whereas Sai will forged his poll for the second time, in Nagarjuna Sagar. Each say they’re inclined to vote in opposition to the incumbent as “it appears impossible to land a government job in the BRS regime”.
Voters under 35 years of age, the age bracket of which authorities job aspirants and college students pursuing increased schooling are an element, represent about one third of the state’s
3.2 crore-strong voters.
About 140 km from Kakatiya College, is Hyderabad’s Osmania College. Over a decade in the past, each these varsities had been on the centre of the student-led protests to demand statehood for Telangana.
Educated children who took half within the agitation anticipated higher job alternatives in a separate state. This sentiment stemmed from a sense that better-paying jobs had been being cornered by their counterparts from the Andhra aspect (when the 2 states had been a part of united Andhra Pradesh).
N. Narayana, 34, is again at Osmania College to pursue Grasp of Training (M.Ed.) within the hope of securing a instructing job with the federal government. The Osmania College hostels him and different students are lodged in proceed to be in the identical ramshackle situation they had been in earlier than the formation of Telangana. A voter in Achampet, he comes from the backward Medara group and pursued a Grasp of Science (M.Sc.) in Arithmetic at Osmania College 11 years in the past, when the statehood motion was at its peak.
For him, unemployment and corruption are causes for which he’ll vote in opposition to the ‘car’ (BRS ballot image) this time round.
Taking a morning stroll in entrance of the long-lasting Osmania College Arts Faculty constructing, constructed by the seventh Nizam within the Nineteen Thirties, Sanjay S., a MA scholar from the Scheduled Tribes (ST) group who comes from Parigi in western Telangana, has one cause to vote the incumbent out: Telangana State Public Service Fee (TSPSC) examination paper leaks.
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TSPSC examination paper leaks
In Ashok Nagar, not removed from Osmania College, a way of despair looms giant. The world, residence to countless lanes of teaching centres and civil providers aspirants, is the equal of Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar.
“I will give my vote to the Congress, no doubt at all,” says 32-year-old Yuvaraj V. (identify modified on request), a Group-I job aspirant who performed a proactive function within the student-led agitation for statehood whereas pursuing M.Sc. in Arithmetic from Osmania College (2012-14 batch).
“We put our life and career at stake for the sake of statehood. But after the formation of Telangana, only one family — that of KCR — prospered, while a whole generation of educated youngsters, their aspirations were devastated,” Yuvaraj tells ThePrint.
His criticism stems from the cancellation of preliminary exams for TSPSC’s Group-I posts, twice prior to now 12 months.
The primary, held final October, was cancelled in March this 12 months after it was discovered that examination papers had been leaked allegedly by some TSPSC workers. The second, held in June, was cancelled in September by order of the Telangana Excessive Court docket which dominated in favour of petitioners who identified irregularities within the conduct of the examinations similar to disregard for biometric attendance and absence of corridor ticket numbers from OMR sheets.
This set of examinations was the primary to be held for Group-I posts for the reason that formation of Telangana in 2014.
Together with Group-I prelims, the TSPSC had additionally cancelled the Divisional Accounts Officer (DAO) and Assistant Government Engineers (AEE) examinations in March this 12 months owing to examination paper leaks.
Yuvaraj and his mates allege that KCR withheld the Group-I notification to fill vacant posts in authorities together with that of Deputy SP, income and industrial tax officers to maintain the “enlightened Telangana student community, which took part in the agitation (for statehood), out of the system.”
When M. Pravallika, 24, died by suicide at a personal hostel in Ashok Nagar this October, a whole bunch of aspirants took to the streets there for a spontaneous midnight protest alleging that postponement of Group-II preliminary exams on account of meeting elections drove her to take the intense step.
Even because the Opposition Congress attacked the BRS, accusing it of deceptive the general public over the suicide and the BJP sought a radical probe, the state police termed her demise the results of a failed relationship.
Telangana minister KT Rama Rao (KTR), whereas lambasting Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and social gathering chief Rahul Gandhi for deceptive folks of the state on the problem, had on TV endorsed the declare that Pravallika was by no means a authorities job aspirant.
“This is not suicide, this is murder – of the dreams of the youth, their hopes and aspirations,” Rahul Gandhi had stated in a put up on X (previously Twitter).
कल हैदराबाद में एक छात्रा की आत्महत्या का समाचार अत्यंत दुखद है।
ये आत्महत्या नहीं, हत्या है – युवाओं के सपनों की, उनकी उम्मीदों और आकांक्षाओं की।
तेलंगाना का युवा आज बेरोज़गारी से पूरी तरह टूट चुका है। पिछले 10 सालों में BJP रिश्तेदार समिति – BRS और BJP ने मिलकर अपनी अक्षमता…
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 14, 2023
If the Congress is voted to energy within the state, Gandhi has promised to “release an (annual) job calendar, reorganise TSPSC on the lines of UPSC in the first month and fill two lakh vacant government posts within the first year”.
Barely a number of days after he raised the problem of Pravallika’s suicide and anger mounted in opposition to the BRS authorities, KTR — who can be CM KCR’s son — met her household and supplied her brother a authorities job and the household monetary help.
On Monday, with lower than two weeks to go for polling day, KTR met a bunch of presidency job aspirants from Ashok Nagar, hailing from completely different districts and warranted them that if re-elected, the BRS will situation a “job calendar”, improve the variety of Group-II posts, whereas additionally expediting the prevailing recruitment course of.
“Learn the facts and debunk Congress’s false propaganda,” he appealed to aspirants.
KTR added that the Congress authorities in united Andhra Pradesh “filled merely 1,000 jobs per year, but we filled 16,000 jobs annually in these 9.5 years”. He additionally promised to fulfill the identical aspirants in Ashok Nagar on the morning of 4 December, the day after counting of votes, to “thoroughly discuss all the government job filling related issues”.
Nonetheless, the scholars of Kakatiya College didn’t seem impressed.
“KTR now says he will cleanse the TSPSC, reform the recruitment system. What was he doing all these months, since the paper leaks and exam cancellations,” asks Siva.
Unemployed in electoral fray
The anger over lack of high quality jobs in Telangana is such that unemployed children have jumped into the electoral fray in elements of the state as a mark of protest.
Whereas a 32-year-old graduate advised ThePrint that he had withdrawn his nomination in Gajwel in opposition to KCR on the final second “owing to pressures” exerted on him and his household, some like Karne Sirisha have stood agency.
A candidate from Kollapur seat in south Telangana, Sirisha rose to fame as barrelakka (buffalo woman) after a viral reel she posted two years in the past went viral. The reel featured Sirisha and 4 buffaloes together with her claiming that her household purchased them for her to farm as a supply of earnings since ‘KCR had not issued any notifications for government jobs’.
Allotted the vigil image, the unbiased candidate is campaigning with the assistance of some children and a reported sum of Rs 1 lakh from former Puducherry minister Malladi Krishna Rao.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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