TRS, YSRC: Friends at home, to fight in Parliament

Hyderabad: If their predictable face-off ahead had a slogan, it would be — just business, nothing personal. The ruling party MPs of both Telugu states — Telan-gana and Andhra Pradesh — will ditch the cordial relations of many a past season, and go to fight pitched battles against each other in Parliament, whose winter session is scheduled to start from Monday. The reason for turning frenemies and yielding no inch is to be seen as strongly fighting to safeguard the interests of their respective states.

Consequently, the Telu-gu political cousins would be putting up no combined fight for any cause, with both the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the YSR Congress MPs sticking to steadfastly remaining on opposite sides on most issues, particularly the irrigation projects, on which the two parties don’t agree on a lot.

During a recent meeting of the TRS Parliamentary Board, TRS working president and minister K.T. Rama Rao asked them to raise the demand for a national status for Kaleshwaram project in Parliament.

Around the same time, YSRC president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy told his party MPs to point out strongly in Parliament that irrigation projects being undertaken by the Telangana state government, including Kaleshwaram, are  illegal. The AP government had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court opposing national status for Kaleshwaram.

The TRS MPs, in a payback, are opposing the Polavaram project. When TRS MPs will bring up the Kaleshwaram project in Parliament, YSRC MPs would oppose it; and when YSRC MPs bring up the Polavaram project, the TRS MPs would oppose it. The reason for TRS opposing the Polavaram project is submerging of villages located in Telangana state under this project. The YSRC counter argument is that once the submerged villages under Polavaram project, located in Khammam district, were transferred to AP, the TRS had no right to object to it, or oppose the Polavaram project on that count.

The TRS government argues that Kaleshwaram project was the same project as Pranahita-Chevella project proposed by the late Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, and was not a new project. The AP government’s argument is that since the Telangana state government had changed the design of Pranahitha-Chevella, Kaleshwaram was a new project. They content it was not an illegal project as the  state had permission from the Central Water Commission (CWC).

It may be recalled that Mr Chandrashekar Rao and Mr Reddy had held discussions thrice on interlinking of the Godavari and Krishna rivers. They decided that both state governments would jointly  take up the project.