India: Rama Rao slams BJP for releasing 'charge sheet'

K T Rama Rao

Hyderabad, Nov 24 (PTI) TRS working president K T Rama Rao on Tuesday flayed BJP for releasing a 'charge sheet' against the party, saying it should instead be against the NDA government for its 'failures' on the economic front and not helping Telangana.

Rao, son of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, said the 'charge sheet' released by Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on November 22 had described the state government as 'TRS-MIM' government when the reality was it was being run by TRS alone.

"It is a TRS government in this state. There are no partners for us.

You and PDP were together in Jammu and Kashmir in the past. You may have had alliances with separatists. But we have not had alliances with any such people here,"he told reporters here.

Taking a dig at the BJP, he wanted to know whether the charge sheet was for the TRS achieving unusual progress in six years after its formation, even as states like Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, formed by the NDA government in 2011, were still facing teething troubles.

The NDA government's 'failures" included a decline in growth rate for eight consecutive quarters prior to COVID-19 and woes of migrant labourers during the lockdown, he said.

Rao said his government's many achievements included providing water facility to drought-prone areas through the Kaleswaram project water, 'Rythu Bandhu' investment support scheme for farmers, insurance and free power supply to them and addressing power shortage in the state

Rao, who is also Municipal Administration Minister, said BJP should clarify whether the NDA government at the Centre has provided even an additional rupee to Hyderabad and Telangana in the last years.

He demanded to know why Public Sector Units, which bring in crores of Rupees as revenue, were being "sold", drawing a sharp response from senior party leader Muralidhar Rao.

Rama Rao said BJP leaders cite losses as the reason for trying to 'sell off' Air India as part of disinvestment, but have no clear answer when asked why they propose a similar exercise for LIC which is running at a profit.

Muralidhar Rao slammed the comments, telling reporters that a false campaign was being carried out that PSUs like LIC and BSNL are being sold off.

"What is the basis to say this? Is it not the BJP government which revived the PSU at Ramagundam (in Telangana)? ....Is it not the BJP government which expanded the NTPC," he asked.

On Rao's reported comments that the state gets only 25 paise from the centre for every Rs one contributed by it, the BJP leader asked who then would meet the country's defence expenditure and added that it was the language of naxalites.

Rama Rao also alleged that the NDA government had not fulfilled the promises made to Telangana in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act in 2014.