K T Rama Rao calls PM’s Rozgar Mela ‘cruel joke’, ‘new drama before Gujarat, Himachal polls’

Telangana Rashtra Samithi working president K T Rama Rao called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Rozgar Mela initiative “a publicity stunt and a cruel joke” on the country’s unemployed youth.

The state IT, Industries and Commerce Minister wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, saying that Modi unveiled “a new drama before the elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.”

Reminding Modi about his assurance to fill two crore jobs every year, Rao said that 16 crore jobs were supposed to be filled in the past eight years.

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“Unemployed youth are waiting for them,” he said.

In the letter, the minister questioned whether the Bharatiya Janata Party would release a white paper on the number of jobs filled by it in the last eight years.

Rao claimed that in the meantime, Telangana government had filled 1.50 lakh government jobs, and initiated the process of filling 91,000 more government jobs. “Besides, 16.5 lakh jobs employment opportunities were provided in the private sector. This was done in the state with a 3.5 crore population,” he said in the missive.

The minister then questioned the Union government led by the BJP on the number of jobs it filled in the country with a population of 130 crore.

Stating that two lakh central government employees retire in our country annually, Rao said: “The central government claiming that they have provided 75,000 jobs in a day without filling 50,000 jobs annually in the past eight years is not justified.”

“What message do they intend to convey to unemployed youth by this new stunt called Rozgar Mela?” KTR questioned, while stating that the Union government itself declared that approximately 16 lakh more jobs had to be filled.

The Telangana minister also sought clarity on the time frame for filling the open vacancies in all central government departments. Rao also pointedly asked in the letter whether the Centre would release a national job calendar for the unemployed youth.

Reminding Modi about Rao’s open letter in June on providing employment opportunities to youth, the state minister said, “But, there was no response,” adding that approximately “two lakh people lost the opportunity of job regularization, as the Modi government is selling the public sector companies.”