Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao has termed the Delhi liquor policy case a “political scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi” to target a few of his political opponents in States where BJP has failed to make inroads for the last 10 years.
Participating in a television live show on Tuesday, he said that his daughter K. Kavitha was in no way connected to the case, and she would come out like a ‘clean pearl’. Stating that the liquor scam was bogus, he said it was a “cock and bull story created by the Modi Government”.
He also said that every State Government has the constitutional authority to bring its own policies and the Delhi Government too, did the same. However, unable to win the Assembly elections in Delhi last three times, Mr. Modi had fabricated the case with the help of the Lieutenant Governor there. “It was height of autocracy that a Chief Minister (Arvind Kejriwal) was being denied bail in the case, as if he would run away from the country if given bail. He too would come out clean,” Mr. Rao said.
The BRS chief reasoned that his daughter was ‘framed’ in the case as the BRS Government had sent the police to Delhi to arrest BJP general secretary B.L. Santosh, who masterminded the failed attempt to purchase BRS MLAs.
Engineers design projects
On Kaleshwaram project, he said, “KCR did not design projects, engineers did. So was Kaleshwaram. I am not an engineering graduate, I am a strategist who wants to protect the interests of Telangana. That’s why I have asked the engineers to redesign the Pranahita-Chevella project to conceive Kaleshwaram. Every structure of the project is safe but unfortunately a few piers of Medigadda Barrage have sunk”.
The work agency, L&T, had offered to rehabilitate the damaged portion of the structure but the Congress Government was not allowing the work, just to target BRS and KCR. He also stated that the cost benefit ratio could not be taken into consideration for a State like Telangana where farmlands were at a much higher altitude than rivers above mean sea level.
On the phone-tapping issue, the former Chief Minister said that the police and home departments would intercept some phone calls which they deem fit under the Indian Telegraph Act and the information collected would be utilised for different purposes.
Bus yatra
Meanwhile, KCR is embarking on a 17-day bus yatra in Telangana from April 24 to May 10, as part of his campaign for the Lok Sabha elections with the party caught in a three-cornered contest and the toughest test of its survival till date.
On Tuesday, a puja was performed to the Telangana Pragathi Ratham, the mini-bus in which KCR would be traversing the State for electioneering in support of party candidates in most of the Parliamentary constituencies, with roadshows in Miryalaguda and Suryapet on Day one.
