Hyderabad: Telangana Congress leaders Md Shabbir Ali and D.K. Aruna on Tuesday alleged that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had deliberately backtracked on his promises of providing scholarships to the student community and the gifting of a two-bedroom flat to those who were eligible.

Addressing separate press conferences at the CLP office on Tuesday, former minister and Gadwal MLA D.K. Aruna questioned the rationale behind housing minister A. Indrakaran Reddy saying that the two-bedroom flat beneficiaries needed to pay Rs 1 lakh as part of their contribution, a contradiction to what the government had previously promised.

“Let the Chief Minister make a statement on whether the government is going to allot flats regardless of the beneficiaries’ contribution. They cannot go back on their promise by creating new conditions. How can a poor person contribute Rs 1 lakh for a small house?” Aruna asked.

However, former minister Shabbir Ali, while defending the TS government’s decision to conduct separate Eamcet for the Telangana students, criticised the Chief Minister for his failure to come out with the guidelines for reimbursement of the tuition fee for students under the FAST (Financial Assistance to Students of Telangana) scheme.

He urged that the Governor and Centre intervene and help take a final decision immediately. “The Governor and Centre should assess whether the TS Higher Education Council is capable of conducting the Eamcet and other CETs on its own.

If it is, then it should reject the objections raised by AP, he added. Mr Shabbir Ali also said that the “FAST” scheme should be renamed as “SLOW” in view of snail-paced progress over its implementation.