We too can cut water to Andhra Pradesh ministers: T Harish Rao

Hyderabad: Telangana state minister for major irrigation T. Harish Rao, accused TD president N. Chandrababu Naidu of trying to politicise the Beas tragedy.

“Even when the Beas mishap took place, knowingly that the college was in Hyderabad and that the Telangana government had already taken steps, Chandrababu played some tricks for publicity’s sake as though the AP government was doing everything. When the bifurcation Act clearly mentioned that the Power Purchase Agreements would continue for 10 years, he deliberately violated it and snapped the agreements only to harm Telangana state and its interests.

How will your government react to these issues?
If he intends to irritate the Telangana government, we will not sit idle. He started the game of politics, he taught us how to play the game; we will also play the game accordingly. If he irritates us like this, we may be compelled to cut supplies of power and water to Chandrababu and his ministers’ residences in Hyderabad. After all, Hyderabad is under our control. We don’t want to resort to such things but we should not be blamed tomorrow if we go for it. Similarly, good quality of coal from Singareni was being sent to the VTPS Thermal Station near Vijayawada and poor quality used to be supplied to Kottagudem. We may do the reverse now. There is some unallocated coal available in Singareni which used to be sent to AP thermal stations as additional coal linkage. We may stop those supplies.

Why aren’t Chandrababu Naidu and Chandrasekhar Rao meeting and sorting out these issues?
Where is that atmosphere? He started playing tricks much before becoming chief minister and is still continuing. How can we talk to him?

Then who will initiate the talks? Why should the people suffer on account of your egos?
We are very clear and clean from our side. We did not do any harm to AP, the provocation is from the other side. I think only the Prime Minister will be able to resolve the issues between the two states. If he initiates some talks with both the chief ministers that would be better.

Do you think Narendra Modi can do that, especially as Chandrababu is part of the NDA alliance?
It is up to him. But one thing is certain, just because Chandrababu is the alliance partner, Centre should not rush to overdo anything to AP. We are not against finances for AP because it has no capital city. But over and above that, any other assistance given to AP and denying the same to Telangana will be resisted by the TRS government. Let there be a level playing field and let both states be assisted equally by the central government.