Bonalu 2026 is under way. KCR's newspaper says the bills behind it aren't paid.
The Ashada Bonalu festival opened at Golconda on July 16 with the state government reporting its arrangements complete and Rs 20 crore sanctioned. A newspaper owned by the BRS says contractors are unpaid since December and tenders were never floated in most zones — a claim no independent outlet has carried.
The festival opened on schedule. Who paid for it, and when, is where the two papers disagree.
The Ashada Masa Bonalu festival opened at the Sri Jagadamba Mahankali temple in Golconda on July 16, 2026, the start of a month of processions and rituals across Hyderabad's temples. It is a state-run affair: the celebrations are conducted under the Telangana Endowments Department, whose minister, Konda Surekha, has held the portfolio since December 2023.
The money is on the record. Endowments Minister Konda Surekha has said Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy sanctioned Rs 20 crore for this year's Bonalu celebrations in Hyderabad, and the government has said its departments coordinated to complete the arrangements.
The physical work of Bonalu — repairing procession routes, lighting, sanitation — is genuinely put out to tender through the GHMC and municipal eProcurement system. Live listings for 2026-27 include, for instance, resurfacing work along the Bonalu procession route in Charminar Circle-28.
Against that, Namasthe Telangana reported on July 24 that the arrangements were in trouble. Its City Bureau item said that except for the Charminar and Golconda zones, tenders had not been invited in most zones, that arrangement bills had been stuck since December, and that some contractors were threatening to halt all festival-related work unless dues and fresh funds were released. It said officials had promised to clear bills up to March by month-end, and that contractors called that too late to be of use during the festival.
The item names no official, no contractor, no contractor body, and no document, figure or file. Its two load-bearing claims — that tenders were not floated and that bills have been stuck since December — rest on unnamed "some contractors" and unnamed "officials."
Two things are worth stating plainly about where the claim comes from. Namasthe Telangana is published by Telangana Publications Pvt. Ltd; the Bharat Rashtra Samithi's own party record lists it, alongside Telangana Today, as its newspaper. The story faults the arrangements of a Congress state government. And its nearest corroboration — a March report that GHMC's empanelled contractors warned three municipal commissioners they would stop work over pending bills — appears in Telangana Today, the sister paper in the same media group, and concerns general civic works rather than Bonalu specifically. No outlet outside that group has reported the Bonalu tender delay or the December-stuck-bills claim.
The general grievance about GHMC contractor payments is real and documented. The specific Bonalu version, as written, is a single outlet's unattributed account against a government that has said the opposite.
The item also ran on July 24 — eight days after the festival opened at Golconda. Whether any temple's arrangements actually failed, or any contractor actually downed tools, it does not say.