Telangana Rashtra Samiti Assembly floor leader Etala Rajender on Sunday asserted that Telugu Desam chief N. Chandrababu Naidu’s ‘padayatra’ and the one by YSR Congress president’s sister Sharmila were driven by their hunger for power.
At a press conference here, he alleged that Mr. Naidu was raising during the padayatra the issues which he had neglected when in power. “There is a change in his perspective. Now he is talking about ‘gram swaraj’. People won’t believe him,” Mr. Rajender pointed out.
The TRS leader charged YSRC honorary president Y.S. Vijayamma with being obsessed with seeing her son Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy occupy seat of power, forgetting the fact of unprecedented ‘loot’ of wealth when YSR was in power. The TDP and YSRC, Mr. Rajender said, were “Andhra parties which were not bothered about people and their welfare.”
Power situation
He blamed the TDP and the Congress governments for the power situation which was severely impacting farmers in Telangana, with crops drying up. The TRS leader accused the governments of not locating power plants in areas which produce coal. Both the TDP and the Congress governments failed to act on innumerable TRS representations on locating power plants in Telangana, but set them up in Andhra area.
Telangana issue
Referring to the Telangana issue, Mr. Rajender accused Union Ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Vayalar Ravi and leaders from the region of talking in different tones. He objected to Mr. Azad’s stand of waiting for a consensus, saying in a democracy decisions were taken on majority. “Eighty p.c. of people in Telangana favoured a separate State,” he said.
