Amid paddy war with Centre, Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao to skip SZC meet today

HYDERABAD: Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will skip the Southern Zonal Council (SZC) meeting to be held in Tirupati on Sunday. The CM has deputed home minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali and senior officers including chief secretary Somesh Kumar and special chief secretary K Rama Krishna Rao to the meeting.

The 29th SZC meeting will be chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah and attended by chief ministers, ministers and officials from southern states — AP, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, and Union territories, apart from Telangana.
KCR was supposed to attend the meeting to be held in the neighbouring state. But due to the friction with the Centre over various issues including the recent fight over paddy procurement, the chief minister has decided to depute his minister and other officials, sources said.
“KCR feels that even if he participates in the meeting it would be of little use as many decisions taken in earlier meetings have not been implemented,” a senior TRS leader said. This is not the first time that KCR has skipped meetings involving the Centre. Earlier, he skipped Niti Aayog meeting held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February this year.
Official sources said the Telangana government has firmed up an agenda with 26 items for the council meeting.
“The major issue that has been listed in the agenda is irrigation projects such as Palamuru-Ranga Reddy and Nakkalagandi project on Krishna river. While AP and Karnataka have complained that Telangana has not submitted a detailed project report (DPR), the state government may raise an objection saying this issue needs to be raised at the KRMB and Apex council meeting and not in SZC meet,” a senior official said.
During the council meeting, Karnataka is likely to raise objection to Sangambanda project, which was taken up by the Telangana government with 3.3 tmc ft capacity as many of its villages were submerged due to this project. But the Telangana government claims it was constructed after sharing DPR with Karnataka.
“The AP government is claiming Rs 3,000 crore power dues from the Telangana which is completely unacceptable and we are going to raise the issue. Apart from this, long pending distribution of assets and liabilities of schedule IX and X institutions and funds for Kovvur-Bhadrachalam railway line issue will be discussed,” an official, who is going to take part in the meeting said.