Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao has debunked Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy’s doubts over fallout of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking at a party workers’ meeting here on Saturday, Mr. Rao said Mr. Reddy had no right to continue as the Chief Minister by opposing the Congress Working Committee’s decision to bifurcate the State. He appealed to the Congress leadership to remove Mr. Kiran Reddy and impose President’s rule in the State.
Alleging that Mr. Reddy behaved as Chief Minister of Seemandhra, he wondered if he had spoken a word about the problems faced by the people of Telangana region for decades and the benefits they would get if the region continued to be in the unified State.
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“There was no single fact in the Chief Minister’s claims and apprehensions except his indirect admission that most of the projects taken up on the river Krishna in Seemandhra are illegal,” the TRS chief said terming Mr. Kiran Reddy’s claims as a pack of lies. It was true that against 90 tmcft allocation of Krishna water to the Rayalaseema region they were utilising 335 tmcft now, he stated.
The misinformation being spread by the Chief Minister that people of Seemandhra would have problems in sharing river waters and employment opportunities if the State was bifurcated were unfounded, he said.
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Addressing separate press conferences earlier in the day, TRS leaders K.T. Rama Rao, K. Keshava Rao, G. Vivek and M. Jagannath countered Mr. Kiran Reddy’s claims point by point.
The TRS leaders sought to set the record straight that the first SRC (Fazal Ali Commission) had not recommended merger of Andhra and Telangana. Further, they pointed out that Dar Commission was against linguistic States stating that it would lead to fanaticism.
On Nagarjuna Sagar project, they said it was proposed by the Nizams and the first feasibility survey was done in 1903 and the foundation stone was laid in 1955, a year before AP was formed. However, it was because of Andhra engineer K.L. Rao that the project site was shifted to 20-km downstream of Nandikonda hills denying the opportunity of irrigating entire Nalgonda.
“Had it been constructed at Nandikonda, people of Nalgonda district would have escaped fluorosis problem,” they pointed out. They also termed the Chief Minister’s claim of irrigating 13.55 lakh acres in Mahabubnagar and Nalgonda with Krishna waters a white lie.