04-11-2007, 04:21 AM
Another CON(gress) SCUMBAG politician called YSR in the CORRUPT news. What is new? <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->
http://www.hindu.com/2007/04/11/stories/...251000.htm
Growing credibility gap
That Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) should offer to institute judicial enquiries into three alleged scams speaks volumes about the credibility gap afflicting his regime. After winning a big electoral mandate in 2004, YSR began to govern on a confident note, making a number of positive socio-economic moves. Over the past year, however, everything seems to have gone wrong for him. The Telugu Desam Party and others in the opposition have been going hammer and tongs at the Chief Minister â for various acts of omission and commission during a tenure that has just reached the halfway mark. While replying to the debate on the Governor's address in the Assembly, the Chief Minister announced judicial enquiries into three major charges against him and those close to him. The first relates to a massive siphoning of funds from the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA); the second concerns the allotment of land to a cement factory in which his son is a Director; and the third is a land scam in which one of his advisers and some party functionaries have been charged. The SSA fraud has been going on for some time; the absence of a proper audit on the utilisation of these special funds has facilitated this systematic pilferage, with the opposition parties linking it to an aide of the Chief Minister. In the wake of the controversy, the offer of land to the cement factory, at prices claimed by the government to be higher than the market rates, was turned down by YSR's son.
Land scams seem to be the order of the day in Andhra Pradesh. No sooner did YSR assume office than the endowment land scandal surfaced, followed by another around the Outer Ring Road project. Now the opposition parties are charging that one of the Chief Minister's advisers and a few Congress functionaries close to him have profiteered by grabbing land from hapless farmers in the proximity of Hyderabad. With Ramoji Rao's Eenadu, India's third largest-read daily newspaper, aggressively investigating and exposing the scandals and the government's misdeeds, the State government showed its intolerant face â attacking the media baron's financial base in an unprecedented way but failing conspicuously to bring him to heel. The YSR government faces a crisis of legitimacy. If the judicial enquiries are to carry conviction, they must be conducted swiftly, without fear or favour. At a time when High Courts and the Supreme Court are unable to spare the services of sitting judges, the State government must persuade the Andhra Pradesh High Court to appoint retired judges with a proven track record to get to the bottom of the transactions that have eroded the credibility of the regime.