Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday hit back at the Telangana government after it said that the Centre had not sanctioned money for a single medical college in the State.
The Minister, in his tweet on Monday evening, said: “How many proposals for medical colleges have been sent by your Telangana State Government? ‘Zero’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sanctioned the highest [number of] government medical colleges in the shortest time, without partiality, to those States who made proposals.’’
Earlier, Telangana Minister for IT and Industries K.T. Rama Rao said the Central government had not sanctioned any money for a single medical college in the State. “Now, let me tell you how many medical colleges our PM Modi ji sanctioned for Telangana,” the State Minister asked in another tweet, which then displayed a list with the number “0”.
He also said that Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had expanded medical education by sanctioning 16 new medical colleges in the State and there were proposals to set up 13 more. The announcement came on August 28.
The tweet blame-game continued well into late evening with Mr. Rao tweeting his response to the Health Minister, stating : “Wish you had a review before you chose to respond. Attached are responses of your predecessors to the requests from Telangana Health Ministers from 2015 & 2019. Telangana Govt has consistently requested for medical colleges but fact is your govt delivered zero.”
The Health Minister responded saying that the Centre had always requested and guided Telangana to send a formal proposal with DPR (detailed project report) as per the scheme requirements. “There is a difference between sending a simple letter and a formal proposal according to the scheme requirements,” the Health Minister tweeted. He attached letters and his response in Parliament to support his stand.
Dr. Mandaviya, in his response, also attached a sheet with a list of States that had not submitted proposals under the Centrally-sponsored scheme to set up medical colleges. As per the tweet, Goa, Kerala, Telangana and Tripura haven’t submitted any proposals so far.
