Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao To Work As Coolie For 2 Days

Hyderabad: Starting Friday and for a week, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will be the state's Coolie No 1, available for hire for two days against daily wages.

KCR, as he is known, has decreed that all ministers, legislators, leaders and activists from his party will raise funds by working as coolies, offering themselves for physical labour for two days each. The money they earn will be used to fund the expenses of the annual convention of the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti or TRS. The gathering will held next Friday, the 21st, at multiple locations across the state, followed by a gigantic public meeting at Warangal, considered the heartland of Telangana.

By offering themselves for hire for two days, including as farm-hands, TRS leaders are expected to earn enough to pay travel and food expenses to attend their party convention.

The Chief Minister has titled the week-long initiative "Gulaabi Cooli Dinalu'' or "Pink Labourer Days" (pink is the colour of the TRS). He has not specified what activity he will choose, but has said he will lead by example.

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KCR also announced that the party's recent attempt to boost enrollment has been a stellar success and that the TRS now has more than 75 lakh members as compared to less than 52 lakhs in 2014, when it came to power in India's youngest state.

"We have collected nearly 35 crore rupees in membership fee and that is reaching our party bank account," the Chief Minister revealed.

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Yesterday, he announced a revision of Telangana's affirmative action policies to guarantee government jobs and seats in colleges. He said the rationale was that 90 per cent of the population in Telangana comprises of backward classes, Muslims and scheduled castes and tribes, all historically disadvantaged communities. His new "reservation quota", so far unannounced, will, he confirmed, exceed the 50% cap set by the Supreme Court, but the Chief Minister said states like Tamil Nadu have gotten around the ruling. "We will follow the Tamil Nadu model of 69 per cent reservation that has not run into any legal trouble," he said.