Deccan Chronicle

Modi, Shah insulted TS: KCR

- DC CORRESPOND­ENT

Charging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah of insulting the state and people of Telangana, Chief Minister K. Chandrasek­har Rao demanded that both these leaders should change their attitude towards Telangana.

Replying to a debate on the Appropriat­ion Bill in the Assembly on Sunday, the Chief Minister recalled the words of Prime Minister Modi on the formation of Telangana state, that the mother had died but the child survived; but only the other day, Shah, referring to the formation of Telangana, had said that it was a “dark day.”

Stating that their attitude directly hurted the self-respect of Telangana, Mr. Rao demanded that Mr Modi and Mr Shah must withdraw their words, saying, “no one has given us Telangana; we fought for separate statehood and achieved it.”

Alleging that the BJP government had not doing anything for Telangana other than showing its empty hand, Mr Rao said, “the BJP government shelved the ITIR project, refused to set up Navodaya

schools in all districts as it had promised, had not granted the Kazipet wagon factory, not sanctionin­g ` 450 crore a year for backward districts, and not offering anything but total silence on national project status for Kaleshwara­m despite repeated requests.”

Ridiculing the BJP over its claims of being gung-ho over its chances of coming to power in the state, the TRS chief ruled out such a scenario or possibilit­y, saying, “if the BJP does come to power, the Rythu Bandhu scheme, which begets farmers `10,000 a year per acre, would be replaced by a mere `6,000 a year under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana.”

He said in the House that “all farmers will have ‘samman’ but no money. They would make Rythu

Bhima a thing of the past, as would the supply of fine rice to students in hostels be scrapped and the Arogyasree health scheme would be replaced with a restrictiv­e Ayushman Bharat.”

Mr Rao said that the BJP should realize that the state administra­tion in Telangana was far better than those in the states it rules. “Sarpanches of 40 villages over five Assembly constituen­cies in the BJPruled Maharashtr­a met with me with a request to merge their villages with Telangana. They said they see their Telangana counterpar­ts across the border taken care of much better.”

He said that villagers asked him that if a merger was not possible, they want TRS party tickets to contest the Maharashtr­a polls.

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