HYDERABAD: A day after BJP national president Amit Shah’s public meeting in Karimnagar, municipal administration minister K T Rama Rao challenged the BJP to at least retain its five seats in the assembly elections. “We will take the assembly elections as a referendum on the TRS governance,”
KTR said. In his address, the BJP president had charged the TRS government of not fulfilling any of the promises made in its manifesto.
“My challenge to Amit Shah is to do what the state government had been repeatedly asking the centre to do for the state. The NDA government still has nine months,” KTR said. “Amit Shah is imagining their strength to be too much. The BJP will not even get deposits in Telangana and he himself will see that,” he said at a press conference in Vemulawada,” he added.
K T Rama Rao pointed out that the earlier UPA government had sanctioned the ITIR (Information Technology Information Region) project for Hyderabad but the NDA government did not approve it. “We could have developed Hyderabad more with the Rs 4,000cr that would have come from the Centre if the ITIR was approved,” KTR said. The minister said a National Institute of Design (NID) had also been asked for but this too was not sanctioned.
“Chief minister Chandrasekhar Rao himself met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on many of the needs of the state but nothing was sanctioned. Telangana was treated with scant respect,” K T Rama Rao said. “The state has got nothing more form the centre than what was its constitutional due,” the minister pointed out.
Though the Telangana government had sought national project status for either Mission Kakatiya or Mission Bhageeratha, this too was not approved. KTR said that even the Niti Aayog was in favour of giving them national project status but the NDA government was indifferent. For Mission Kakatiya, Rs 5,000 cr was sought and for Mission Bhageeratha, Rs 15,000 was sought. He said even the Bayyaram steel plant was not approved though the state government had promised to bear part of the expenditure. The Kazipet coach factory had not materialised and seven mandals which were made part of AP had not been returned to Telangana. The High Court bifurcation too has not happened. “The only thing that happened in the last budget was about an AIIMS for Telangana, that too after we pursued the Centre repeatedly,” he said.
“Where is the Ram Mandir that the BJP government said it would build? By whipping up emotions and dividing people on religious lines, the party’s strength grew from 2 to 272. This is your brand of politics,” he said addressing Amit Shah. KTR said that the TRS was a secular party and every religion was respected.