Heated Clash in Telangana Assembly as BRS Government Defends Outer Ring Road Lease

Hyderabad: The issue of BRS government leasing out the Outer Ring Road for 30 years has led to heated arguments between municipal minister K.T. Rama Rao and Congress MLAs in Assembly on Saturday. Rama Rao asserted that lease was executed in strict adherence to the guidelines prescribed by the Centre for national highways.

Strongly denying Opposition parties' charges of receiving kickbacks, Rama Rao offered to resign as minister if the Opposition parties proved their allegations. "I am even ready to quit politics permanently. I already served legal notices to those who made false and baseless allegations against me. The matter is sub judice. If you have any evidence of irregularities, you can submit them in courts," Rama Rao said.

Launching a blistering attack on Congress and BJP, Rama Rao appealed to Telangana voters to defeat them in upcoming Assembly polls.

He read out the speech given by then TD MLA A. Revanth Reddy, currently the TPCC chief, in the Assembly in 2014 about the failures of the Congress government with regard to providing water and electricity. This led to heated arguments between treasury benches and Congress MLAs, who objected to taking the name of their party leader who was not the member of the House.

Rama Rao thanked former AP chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for acknowledging the Telangana government's good governance and development in the last nine years, referring his reported comments that land prices in Telangana had shot up.

"The CM and opposition leader in neighbouring AP acknowledged the development and good governance of Telangana government. But sadly, opposition parties here can't see this," Rama Rao said.