With top BJP leaders, including Union home minister Amit Shah scheduled to campaign for party candidates in the Hyderabad civic polls, TRS took a dig at them for descending in hordes on the eve of election and not when the city was facing a calamity.

With the campaign touching a new low, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today directed the police to remain alert as there are reports of conspiracies to create communal disharmony among the communities.

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Apart from Union home minister Amit Shah, national president JP Nadda and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath will campaign in the last leg while former Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis will release the party manifesto.

On Wednesday Union textile minister Smriti Irani was in the city and another union minister Prakash Javadekar had also visited in connection with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls. TRS working president KT Rama Rao took a swipe at the senior BJP leaders joining the campaign.

“We welcome the top leadership of BJP to the state who are coming to campaign in the local municipal election in Hyderabad. It would have been much better if the same leaders had come to Hyderabad when the city was facing heavy rains and floods.

“Instead of coming with empty hands I request them to bring along Rs 1,350 crore which KCR (K Chandrasekhar Rao) had appealed for in his letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as financial assistance for undertaking relief measures in flood affected colonies,” said Rao during his campaign in Uppal area.

The urban development minister also condemned the remarks of AIMIM floor leader in the Assembly Akbaruddin Owaisi who has demanded that the state government should dismantle the memorials of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and former chief minister NT Rama Rao adjacent to Hussain Sagar Lake as these two were also encroachments along the iconic water body.

He was criticising the government’s demolition drives. He also said that AIMIM knew how to control the TRS. In the election campaign AIMIM leaders have attacked the TRS and its working president KT Rama Rao denouncing him as a parrot and claiming to be kingmakers even though the two parties enjoy friendly ties.

However, BJP state president Bandi Sanjay Kumar who will visit the memorial of PV Narasimha Rao tomorrow before campaigning strongly objected to Akbaruddin Owaisi’s derogatory comments and threatened to demolish the AIMIM’s headquarters in Hyderabad if the memorials were even touched.

PM SVANidhi scheme

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday launched the PM Street Vendors AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme, meant for extending collateralfree loans up to Rs 10,000 each to street vendors, but named it after himself, drawing flak from the BJP.

The CM renamed the Central Sector Scheme, fully-funded by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, after himself as ‘Jagananna Todu’, claiming that the state government would bear the full interest on the loans.