The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao provide details on the precise cost of the Kaleshwaram irrigation project, how much of water was being released through it and how many acres of agriculture land was being provided water through it.
Party president K. Laxman in a press statement wanted KCR to spell out if the project had been completed or not. “The ruling party has been celebrating that the project has been completed but the Chief Minister’s remarks indicate it is yet to be completed. It is a well known fact that the project has been re-designed to benefit the contractors,” he charged.
If the government was sure about the project, he wondered why it was hesitating to release a white paper on it. Instead of clearing the doubts being expressed in several quarters about the project and questions raised on the money spent, criticising the Opposition would only lower KCR’s stature, he felt.
The CM’s sudden tour to the mid-Manair dam was only to divert people’s attention in the light of the forthcoming municipal elections and to evade giving his point of view on the raging Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), he observed. The BJP leader accused KCR of opposing the Act in Parliament only to keep ally Majlis “happy” but he was bound to face people’s wrath in the local bodies polls.
At a separate press conference, former MLA N.V.S.S. Prabhakar charged the Congress, TRS and Majlis with giving a “communal colour” to the CAA to suit their selfish interests. He said the Owaisi family, despite representing Hyderabad for several decades, had done “nothing for the betterment and development of Muslim community as poverty, unemployment and illiteracy continues to be very high compared to other places”.
