The Telangana government is blatantly playing with the people on the issue of film ticket prices.
During the Pushpa 2 stampede incident, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy thundered in the Assembly that he would not allow premiere shows or any hike in ticket rates.
But what happened later? The same government quietly released GOs for select films, permitting sharp hikes.
For OG, tickets were shamelessly priced at Rs 800 for premiere shows held a day before release. In Nizam, the film’s four-day collection was fattened mainly due to these inflated prices. Single-screen tickets were fixed at Rs 227, while multiplexes charged Rs 445.
People expected normal rates to return from Monday, but the same hiked prices continued, despite Court's order to return to normal prices.
Only after heavy criticism the government issued a new GO, suddenly declaring that ticket hikes would not be allowed anymore.
This flip-flop exposes the Congress government’s lack of discipline, direction and fairness.
Governance here looks less like a system of rules and more like the whims and fancies of a few leaders.
If the government truly opposes ticket price hikes, why did it bend rules for OG? Why deny the same for other films later?
This selective treatment reeks of favoritism, one yardstick for big straight films, another for dubbed films.
Even when courts ordered an immediate stop to hiked prices, the government slept on the matter until Monday evening, and then tried to act as if it was being responsible.
Is this governance or mockery? In Andhra Pradesh, every major release gets a hike. Why is Telangana selective and inconsistent?
These double standards are disgraceful, and they drag down the image of the Congress government to nothing but cheap opportunism. Time and again, it is being proved even in Revanth Reddy's rule.
