He said he would not move until the minister answered. The answer he wants is a CBI.

This is not another copy of the already-live Section 22A prohibited-list story. That list, the apology, the letters — those are out. This is the political attack that followed: a CBI demand on a sitting Telangana minister.

Alleti Maheshwar Reddy, the Bharatiya Janata Party's legislature-party leader, told the press at the State party office that Revenue Minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy's responsibility does not end with an apology to people whose land was pushed onto a prohibited list. He wants a white paper on the minister's wealth. He wants a House committee or the Central Bureau of Investigation. On Wednesday he dared the minister to an open debate and said that if Ponguleti does not come, the party will take "all relevant evidence" to the Enforcement Directorate, the CBI and other agencies. He said he would not stand down until the minister answered.

The charges he put on the table are his, not a court's. He alleged a quid pro quo between Raghava Constructions, which he says the minister's family owns, and the Phoenix group, which he called a benami of Bharat Rashtra Samithi leaders. He put ₹15,000 crore on that alleged trail and said about 103 shell companies were being used as fronts. He said seven acres in the financial district, worth about ₹1,200 crore, moved from Phoenix Spaces to Raghava and NOVA. He said the Telangana Industrial Infrastructure Corporation allotted land to Phoenix Tech Zone Private Limited under BP No 100/2024 on 18 February 2025 for a residential building, and that Phoenix signed a construction agreement with Raghava the next day. He asked why, if officials alone erred on the prohibited list, no one was being proceeded against under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

He also asked Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy to order a CBI inquiry into who built what he called the 22A conspiracy, and why the Chief Minister — who had earlier called Phoenix a hawala shop — had not written to the ED or the CBI in two and a half years. He called the Chief Minister's foreign travel a leisure trip while land worth lakhs of crores sat in dispute. He said depriving people of property without due process violates Article 300A, and that a white paper should show how much land sat on the prohibited list under the previous government and how much was added after. He used a statewide figure of over ₹1 lakh crore for that alleged loot. That number is his claim.

A CBI is not a verdict. A white paper is not a chargesheet. A legislature-party leader who says he will not move is doing politics. The civic fact is narrower, and it is why this cutting stays off the list story: the man who holds the State's land file is being asked, in public, to open his own. An apology to affected owners does not answer Raghava, Phoenix, a next-day construction agreement, or a wealth paper. Those are the sentences Alleti has put on the minister. They remain allegations until an agency or a House committee tests them.

Ponguleti has been the face of the government's promise that the 22A mess will be cleaned up. Cleaning a list is not the same as answering a corruption charge. If the minister has a ledger that kills the ₹15,000 crore line, he can bring it to the debate Alleti offered. If he has only the apology, the CBI demand will keep travelling. Until one of those two things happens, a sitting revenue minister in Telangana has an Opposition file on his name that is not the list — it is the CBI.