KCR says he resisted pressure to back 3 farm Bills in House

Sources said CM feels the legislations will benefit private players

Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Saturday told some of his ministers and legislators that the BJP government at the Centre had put a lot of pressure on him to support the contentious farm Bills passed in the Rajya Sabha recently but he had resisted it, sources said.

He was speaking informally with ministers and MLAs from Nalgonda, Ranga Reddy, Mahbubnagar, Warangal, Khammam and Hyderabad districts at Pragathi Bhavan.

Sources said that the CM told them that despite the pressure he did not vote with the NDA as he felt that the legislations were detrimental to the farmers.

Sources said that Rao also told the ministers and MLAs that the BJP leadership had brought pressure on him to support the proposed Electricity Bill. The Bill will benefit private players to sell electricity to the state governments.

Sources said Rao had called the ministers and MLAs to get feedback on the New Revenue Act, proposed digitalisation of property recards, the Layout Regularisation Scheme (LRS) which is facing opposition from the BJP, and the government’s stand on the Electricity Bill.

He will be meeting with other leaders in the coming days.

The CM told the leaders to highlight the benefits of the New Revenue Act, the LRS and regularisation of sada binama (agreements written on plain paper) land transactions and convince them to cooperate with the government to bring a transparent and corruption-free revenue administration.

While referring to the elections to two Legislative Council graduate seats, Rao asked the leaders not to get confused by the propaganda of Opposition that graduates and unemployed are against the TRS.

He asked the leaders to take an active role in enrolling voters for the graduates elections and forward updates to the party office regularly, sources revealed.

Rao is said to have told them that since the launching of the TRS, the youth of the state have been with the TRS and they will continue to remain so. The Chief

Minister termed the BJP as a “bakvas party” that would never emerge as alternative to the TRS, sources added.

Rao said that the BJP was only interested in dethroning Opposition governments in the states, they don’t show any interest in the welfare of the people, sources said.

The Chief Minister reportedly told the ministers and MLAs that internal surveys of the party showed that the TRS would win 104 divisions in the GHMC elections and the Dubbaka byelection with a large margin.