Sitharaman proved BJP punishing Telangana for not toeing line: Harish

Hyderabad: With Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman declaring that Centre was not giving funds to Telangana because the state refused to install meters for agricultural power connections, TRS leader and minister T. Harish Rao on Wednesday said that the BJP has no right to seek votes from people in Telangana.

Addressing a press conference in Siddipet, Harish Rao appealed to employees not to get swayed by promises of other parties and assured that the BRS government will make every effort to pay salaries on the first of every month.

“Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao runs an employee-friendly government, which can be seen from the fact that salaries and pensions used to be around Rs 18,000 crore in 2014, and,  now after hikes, has gone up to around Rs 60,000 crore a year. One of the reasons the state faced is that the Centre denied nearly Rs 1 lakh crore to the state making it difficult for Telangana. But the BRS government will take all steps to ensure salaries are paid on time,” he said.

On Sitharaman’s comments on agricultural power connections, Harish Rao said the state was being punished for not falling in line with the BJP’s demands.

“She said no funds for Telangana because it did install the power meters. Chandrashekhar Rao made it clear that the BRS government will not install meters as demanded by the Centre. For him, the lives of 69 lakh farmers of the state are important. Funds are important too but not at the cost of farmers,” Harish Rao said.

Harish Rao said such meters have already been fixed in the states which are ruled by the Congress and the BJP. “If people vote for the Congress, be assured that it will force installation of meters for agricultural connections. They have already done this in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and Karnataka. This was prevented from being enforced in Telangana because we have Chief Minister Chandrashekhar Rao who helped farmers stand on their feet, and now it is our turn to ensure that he wins,” Harish Rao said.

He also said the power meters were fixed in the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, and in  the INDI Alliance led states of Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Kerala. The power meters were installed in Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya. Only the BRS government led by KCR defied the BJP’s demand, he added.

Brandishing a report from the RBI, Harish Rao said per capita income rose by 2.5 times to Rs 3,17,117 in 2023 from 2014, but Sitharaman does not talk about this achievement. All she says is Telgnana is burdened by loans. But she does not talk about how the Centre was borrowing Rs 1 lakh crore a month and took its loan burden from Rs 55 lakh crore in 2014 to Rs 155 lakh crore. Our loans stand at 28 per cent of our GSDP, while the BJP government’s loans stand at 57 per cent of the GDP.

Harish Rao also asked Sitharaman to release a white paper on how many jobs the BJP government filled out of the 18 crore that it promised to fill since 2014.