Slamming the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for denying any support to Telangana, state Industry Minister KT Rama Rao on Friday vowed to ensure that he is voted out in the next elections at any cost.
The ruling BRS is neither a part of the NDA nor of the newly-formed INDIA, which includes the Congress.
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Delivering the Abhay Tripathi Memorial Lecture on “Challenges of being a young state”, the minister mentioned that despite being a young state, Telangana has performed exceedingly well, yet there has not been any appreciation or financial support from the Centre.
Criticising the prime minister for not acknowledging the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project considered to be the largest in the world, Rao said, “His own state in India of which the prime minister builds the largest lift irrigation project and this prime minister does not have the dignity to complement the state for its brilliant efforts. So, we have no hope from this Union government and we will certainly take them on and will ensure that he is voted out at any cost in the next elections.”
Hitting out at the prime minister, Rao said: “We helped him as far as possible. But what did he do? He didn’t keep even one of the promises made in the (Reorganisation) Act in Parliament. Even the recommendations made by Niti Aayog were negated and categorically rejected.”
The BRS had extended its support on the floor of Parliament on a number of issues, including abrogation of Article 370. He pointed out that Telangana gives more to the country then it gets back.
Rao went on to add that the prime minister keeps saying a lot of things, “Mann ki baat, vocal for local but he does not want to recognise a performing state because of petty political considerations.”
He listed out the sectors in which Telangana surpassed others, including the top position in paddy production and surpassing Bangalore in terms of creation of tech jobs apart from increasing green cover. He said if the other states in the country had performed at par with Telangana India would have crossed the target of five trillion economy. The IT Department got a shot in the arm with Tamil Nadu IT minister PTR visiting the state with his team to study the best practices.