Stating that able governance and stable leadership was the hallmark of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government, Minister for IT K.T. Rama Rao asked the opposition parties to name their Chief Ministerial candidate before challenging the supremacy of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
In an informal chat with reporters here, he asserted that KCR was bound to come back the third time with a huge majority in the ensuing Assembly elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not even secure the present three seats in the next elections while the Congress was in no position to challenge KCR. He asked the Congress not to get excited by the party’s win in Karnataka and realise that BRS was not a weak government like the BJP government in Karnataka.
Asserting that KCR, who is already the longest-serving Chief Minister compared to any CM in the combined Andhra Pradesh was the most popular face, Mr. Rama Rao predicted a hattrick for the BRS government with over 80 seats. The achievements of KCR government were enough to travel a few more years, he said, adding that the progress card itself would take it forward.
“People gave 70 years for other parties and BRS achieved in just 9 years what others could not achieve in seven decades,” he said urging people not to fall for false assurances. “No one will drop a hundred rupee note and pick up change from the ground,” he hoped.
Expressing his opinion on a range of issues, he reiterated his demand for a debate on the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats as it was punishing better-performing states against those that had failed in population control. For example, Uttar Pradesh would be the 6th largest country in the world if it was a separate country and it would get the maximum number of Lok Sabha seats due to its sheer number. This could not be justified., and Instead, the country should look at various other systems with equal representation to all states like in the USA.
Reacting to AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi’s comments that Muslims in Telangana were backward and ignored, he said the same person appreciated the role of BRS in the development of Muslims during his earlier speeches in Uttar Pradesh. If the AIMIM wanted to contest from outside Hyderabad in Telangana it was free to contest. “What makes you think Muslims will vote for one particular party,” he asked when asked if that would hit the BRS.
ORR contract
KTR demanded that TPCC president A. Revanth Reddy and BJP MLA Raghunandan Rao submit any evidence they had on their allegations that there was a scam in the award of ORR maintenance to a private company. Since legal notices had been served to them by the HMDA, he said let them reply to the notices with the evidence as the matter was sub judice.
He said the government was open to any investigation including the CBI and warned that he would deal with any allegations being made through legal notices. “The opposition has this habit of making wild allegations and we need to tackle it legally,” he said.
Ticket to MLAs
Commenting on reports that ticket would be denied to sitting MLAs, he said those performing better would be rewarded. However, he said there was a lot of time to discuss the party ticket.
