Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Monday urged the newly anointed ministers from the two Telugu states to take initiative to resolve the pending issues of the Bifurcation Act.
Five ministers, including two Cabinet ministers and three Ministers of State, from the twin states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were sworn-in on Sunday, for the first time since 2014.
While congratulating the five ministers, three from BJP and two from TDP the chief minister wrote on social media platform ‘X’ that they should take initiative to secure funds and bring projects.
“I urge them to initiate efforts to implement the provisions of AP Reorganisation Acts and secure the funds, schemes and projects due from the Centre for the two Telugu states,” he said in an appeal.
Even after a decade there are several issues which are still pending between the two states related to bifurcation of assets and sharing of water of Godavari and Krishna rivers. There are also some disputes over financial dues between the two states which need to be resolved.
When the unified state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated to carve out Telangana, the Centre had also made certain promises which were included in the AP Reorganisation Act in 2014. Most of these promises such as the special status to Andhra Pradesh or a rail coach factory to Telangana are still pending.
The chief minister was referring to the unresolved disputes and the unimplemented provisions of the bifurcation act as well as the promises made by the central government to the Telugu states in his post.
In 2014, the two chief ministers K Chandrasekhar Rao of Telangana and Nara Chandrababu Naidu did not share a good rapport and looked upon each other with suspicion, particularly after the vote for note case. After YS Jagan Mohan Reddy came to power the two chief ministers shared good rapport but failed to resolve the issues.
However, the current Telangana chief minister had once been in TDP and was even close to Naidu.
While Telangana has two ministers – G Kishan Reddy who was given full Cabinet rank this time and Bandi Sanjay Kumar who was sworn in as a minister of state Andhra Pradesh got three ministers, two from TDP and one from BJP. The two TDP ministers include K Rammohan Naidu, a full Cabinet minister and P Chandrasekhar as minister of state.
The sole BJP MP sworn in as a minister was B Srinivasa Varma.