With what face is (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) coming to Telangana? Telangana people are not naive. Modi is behaving as if he is giving us alms. The Railway Manufacturing Unit (RMU) that the central government is setting up in Kazipet costs a mere Rs 520 crore. Hence, we decided to boycott Modi’s visit to Telangana. Thus spoke Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), working president of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and Telangana’s Minister for Information Technology, Industry & Municipal Administration at a press conference held a day before Modi’s latest visit to the state.
Is Chief Minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) and his party boycotting the Prime Minister’s visit because Modi and the central government he leads neglected the state’s development concerns – as KTR claims? Are KTR’s claims factual? Is the Prime Minister visiting the state to lay the foundation stone for the Rail Manufacturing Unit alone? Or are fear and shame driving the Chief Minister’s and his party’s actions? Let us examine.
KTR’s claim that the Prime Minister is visiting Telangana to lay the foundation stone for the Kazipet RMU alone is a blatant lie. During his visit on Saturday, the Prime Minister will initiate projects worth more than Rs 6100 crore. Besides the RMU at Kazipet, which costs Rs 521 crore, the Prime Minister will also lay the foundation for three packages of the Mancherial-Warangal four-lane national highway covering 109 kilometres and the four-laning of 68 kilometers in the Jagitial-Karimnagar-Warangal inter corridor. The road projects cost another Rs 5,588 crore, bringing the value of the projects the Prime Minister will launch on Saturday to Rs 6109 crore. It is not that the central government or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have kept the details of the projects and their costs a secret from the BRS party and its working president. The facts were all over the press, and on top of it, both Union Minister and Telangana BJP unit president Gangapuram Kishan Reddy, and BJP’s national parliamentary board member Dr Kova Laxman had held separate press conferences to share these details.
It is not that KCR is boycotting Modi’s visit for the first time. On numerous occasions earlier, the CM avoided receiving the Prime Minister and absented himself from the Prime Minister’s official functions in the state. Even in April, when the Prime Minister visited Hyderabad to lay the foundation and dedicate completed projects together worth Rs 11,700 crore, the Chief Minister was nowhere to be seen. Unlike this time, the last visit was to the capital city, and the venue of the PM’s events was barely a couple of kilometres away from Pragathi Bhavan – the newly built palatial official residence of the Chief Minister.
In November last, KCR had not just boycotted the Prime Minister’s visit, but his party workers had even set up “Go back Modi” banners all over the state. Modi was on an official trip then to rededicate the Ramagudam fertiliser factory, revived at a cost of Rs 6,338 crore and dedicate the Bhadrachalam Road – Sattupalli railway line to the nation, which cost another Rs 1,000 crore. All in all, along with three other National Highway projects he launched that day, costing over Rs 2,200 crore, the total value of the projects he either launched or inaugurated during the visit was more than Rs 9,500 crore.
While the state’s capital expenditure was close to 18,008 crore, according to the preliminary accounts prepared by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), the value of projects Modi launched or inaugurated is more than Rs 27,300 crore. That’s 150% of the KCR-led BRS party state government’s total capital expenditure for Telangana’s development. The staggering scale of the central government’s contribution to the state became clear only recently when Kishan Reddy presented a comprehensive “Report to the People” of Telangana, detailing how the central government had spent Rs 6.77 lakh crore for the welfare and development of the state over the past nine years, busting another propaganda of the BRS. The BRS leaders had been claiming from rooftops that the state received only Rs 1.68 lakh crore in return, while it had sent Rs 3.66 lakh crore in taxes to the Center.
The reason for KCR and his party’s boycotts of Modi’s recent visits to the state are thus obvious. KCR practices “Maximum politics, minimum governance”, while Modi practices “Maximum governance, minimum government”. Apparently, the fear of negative political consequences from a comparison of KCR’s and Modi’s or BJP’s and BRS’s contributions to the state’s development is what drives KCR to avoid Modi at any cost.
Unfortunately, our state is burdened with leadership that prioritises its own ego and political benefit over the state’s development and its people’s welfare. I shudder to imagine the consequences for Telangana if any ‘Desh ki neta’ other than Modi was the Prime Minister. Thanks to Modi’s large heart, he never let Telangana be disadvantaged as a consequence of the BRS party and its chief’s boorish, discourteous behaviour.
(The author is BJP TS spokesperson)
