Evening Pulse: A smaller Singareni bonus, and a BRS fightback over land, tenders and coal

Telangana's Tuesday ended on money: who gets it, whose land is taken for it, and who is accused of skimming it. While much of the Cabinet spent the day on the voter-roll fight in Delhi, the state government had one big announcement to make at home, and the opposition spent the afternoon finding fault with nearly everything else.

The announcement was the Singareni Dasara bonus. At Praja Bhavan, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said 34% of Singareni Collieries' Rs 1,754 crore profit would go to workers, as it did last year, Telangana Today and ETV Bharat reported. Each permanent employee gets Rs 1,53,912. Telangana Today put last year's figure at Rs 1,95,610, so the cheque is smaller by roughly a fifth. Contract workers get Rs 5,500, the same as before. Bhatti blamed lower output on the previous BRS government, saying it failed to secure new coal blocks when the Centre auctioned them. He also promised about 300 pending compassionate appointments within 15 days, a one-time return for workers dismissed during Covid, house-site pattas on 1,250 acres of company land and upgraded area hospitals.

Not everyone was in a festive mood. AITUC workers protested at Vidyut Soudha in Khairatabad, demanding that dues owed to Singareni and workers' profit shares be released, ETV Bharat reported. The union's state president Vasireddy Sitaramaiah said those dues stood at Rs 26,000 crore when KCR left office and had risen to Rs 59,000 crore under the Congress. The BRS, meanwhile, is preparing a 'Singareni Karmika Garjana' at Singareni Stadium in Godavarikhani on Wednesday evening, with KT Rama Rao as chief guest, Namasthe Telangana and Andhra Jyothy reported. Organisers say they want 20,000 to 30,000 workers there, and that unpaid dues, falling production and housing will top the agenda. The bonus figure now hands them a ready opening line.

Land was the BRS's second front. At Telangana Bhavan, deputy floor leader P Sabitha Indra Reddy accused the government of taking farmers' land at Bahadurguda under police protection for a bullet train whose alignment, she said, the Union Railway Minister had described as not yet final, Telangana Today and Namasthe Telangana reported. She asked Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and Union Minister G Kishan Reddy to explain the boundary markings, questioned a new Kothwalguda-Kodangal road and cited a farmer's suicide attempt at Lagacherla. Former MLA Manchireddy Kishan Reddy said the government had dropped the 14,000-acre Pharma City but notified another 2,500 acres nearby. Neither report carried a response from the state or the Railways.

Then came tenders, again. Former minister T Harish Rao, after meeting a gurukul contractors' association, demanded that the government scrap the centralised tender that gives NACOF the job of supplying provisions to welfare hostels and residential schools, Telangana Today reported. He alleged that the Rs 800 crore contract was split among 12 subcontractors in breach of the rules, that a 20% commission was being taken on bills, and that only about 280 of some 4,000 hostels got supplies before the Dasara holidays. Separately, BC Welfare Association president Jajula Srinivas Goud also sought cancellation and asked the Chief Minister to blacklist the firm, Andhra Jyothy reported. These are allegations. We found no government reply.

The voter-roll fight has a home ledger too. Deccan Chronicle reported, citing officials, that about 2.42 crore of the 2.65 crore names on Telangana's draft roll, about 90%, have been cleared for the final list due on 9 November. Of 92.88 lakh voters flagged for discrepancies, 85.19 lakh had been heard by Monday and 16,976 found ineligible. Siasat carried the same figures this afternoon. The pre-revision roll held 3.38 crore names, a gap of about 73 lakh, close to the figure the PCC cited on Monday. Officials have not said how many of those were deaths, duplicates or people who moved.

Several loops we flagged this afternoon are still open. By 7 pm we found no reply from the CMO, Hyderabad Growth Corridor Ltd or the Congress to Munugode MLA Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy's Radial Road-2 allegations, no report of the outcome of the High Court hearing on the ED's plea in the Jagan cases, no word that the Osmania junior doctors' protest has ended, no reported arrests in the Medak Chakali Ilamma statue case, and no government answer to the BRS on GO 17 and the Rythu Discom.