₹12,000 promise, ₹0 clarity
Congress promised ₹12,000 a year to every auto driver and a welfare board. Drivers are still asking where either is. The BJP isn’t the answer; the file is in the Congress government’s own drawer.
The promised support and welfare board remain unaccounted for.
Congress put it in writing before the election: ₹12,000 per year to every auto-rickshaw driver, plus a welfare board to back it. That line sits in the party’s 2023 manifesto under Transport/Auto Drivers Welfare. According to the same document, the board was meant to follow. The public record since then is quieter than a meter in a bus lane.
Auto unions have been on the street through 2026 repeating the same demand: implement the ₹12,000 support and set up the welfare board. In January, Hyderabad drivers struck saying free bus travel for women under Mahalakshmi has cut into their daily earnings; in May, they were back at Indira Park pressing the same points. Those are drivers’ claims, and the government has not published an assessment that proves or disproves them.
What is documented: Mahalakshmi began on 9 December 2023, covers women, girls and transgender persons on specified TGSRTC services, and the state says RTC costs are reimbursed. By mid-2024 the government’s own book was counting tens of crores of free journeys. What is not documented anywhere the public can see: an order implementing ₹12,000 for auto drivers, eligibility rules, a budget head, a beneficiary list or a welfare board notification.
The BJP will happily tweet about “promises betrayed”; the BJP also did not write Telangana’s manifesto and does not run this government. The file sits with the Congress in Hyderabad. If there is a payment order or a board notification, the Congress government can publish it today. If there isn’t, it can say so and explain what replaces its own promise. Silence is not a scheme.
The Congress government in Telangana has not bothered to answer a basic question: where is the ₹12,000 and where is the board it promised auto drivers.