RAMAGUNDAM: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday dismissed claims of “selfish political parties” that the Centre was planning to privatise Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL)
He said the Centre could not privatise SCCL as the Telangana government held a 51 per cent stake in the coal mining major, while the Centre held a 49 per cent share.
Modi said that the Centre never discussed such a proposal and that rumours were being spread to provoke the public. He appealed to SCCL workers not to believe in such claims, and confine it to those trying to spread them from Hyderabad, in a dig at the TRS.
The Prime Minister was speaking after dedicating to the nation the Rs 6,300-crore Ramagundam Fertiliser Company Limited’s urea plant and Rs 1,000-crore Bhadrachalam Road-Sattupalli railway line. Modi also laid the foundation stone for three road projects worth Rs 2,200 crore — the Medak-Siddipet-Elkathurthy section of NH-765DG, Bodhan-Basar-Bhainsa section of NH-161BB, and Sironcha-Mahadevpur section of NH-353C
Modi said that new highways would connect industrial corridors and textile parks, and that the railway line would link Bhadradri-Kothagudem with Khammam.
The Prime Minister said that new technology to produce urea was introduced at the RFCL to meet the demand for fertiliser. He said that India’s urea imports have come down, after setting up five plants in the country.
Modi also addressed economic concerns, citing views by international economists that India had emerged as the third-largest economy in the world. India, he said, was poised to see a development spurt that will eclipse the development over the past three decades since 1990.
Discussing the coal block, he said that the BJP has introduced a transparent system to curb scams, which, earlier, used to run into lakhs of crores of rupees.
Union minister G. Kishan Reddy said that the Modi government was implementing a slew of welfare and development programmes, such as Pradhan Mantri Kisan Yojana. The Centre, he said, hiked the minimum support price for cotton, provided Rs 1-kg rice and free rice during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and was funding developmental works at the gram panchayat level.
Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan, union minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers Bhagwanth Kuba, BJP state president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar, Adilabad MP Soyam Bapu Rao, Huzurabad MLA Etala Rajendar, former MP G. Vivek Venkatswamy, and senior BJP leader Somarapu Satyanarayana were present.
