“Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao neither has the stature nor the experience to play a key role in national politics and his new journey is to divert people’s attention in Telangana where his political fortunes are nosediving rapidly,” argued former TPCC president Ponnala Lakshmaiah on Tuesday.
Mr. Lakshmaiah said that except for the ‘leaks’ to the media, the Mumbai tour of KCR has achieved nothing and his claims of creating “Bangaru Bharatadesham” were laughable. “After failing Telangana and making it a debt-ridden State, he perhaps wants to replicate the same in the country,” he said sarcastically.
The former Minister said that KCR’s only achievement was to burden Telangana with an additional ₹3 lakh crore. “If Telangana had acquired ₹70,000 crore loans in 65 years, KCR government acquired 3 lakh crore in just seven years,” he said, adding that “people should see through his game.”
‘No returns from Kaleshwaram’
Mr. Lakshmaiah also alleged that the tall claims on irrigation projects are just farce as Kaleshwaram water is being lifted and sent to the sea creating a huge burden on the State in the form of electricity charges for lifting. The water is not contributing to any additional acreage of agriculture. All the water being utilised now is through the projects built by the Congress, he said. “How will the State pay back the debt when Kaleshwaram is not giving any returns.”
He reminded that Congress built the first power plant of 11 MW in Bhupalapalli and another 1,200 MW plant in Singareni. Similarly, the previous Congress government constructed 34 projects till 2014 bringing an additional 10 lakh acres into agriculture. The senior Congress leader claimed that people were fed up with Chief Minister’s false claims in every sector and they will not believe him given his record on broken promises made before the elections.
