Hyderabad: The BRS on Saturday pilloried the BJP’s promise of making a leader from the BC communities the Chief Minister if they come to power, with the ruling party’s working president K.T. Rama Rao pointing out that the BJP government at the Centre had refused to have a ministry for the community despite repeated pleas.
“The BJP appears to be in a strange state of mind. First, they removed a BC leader, who was their president in the state. Now they say they will have a BC as the Chief Minister. Our Assembly had passed a resolution and sent it to the Centre but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not taken any action on this front. It does not want to take up a BC enumeration. Yes, Modi is an OBC but having a leader at the top does not change the lives of the rest. What is needed is character, not which community a person comes from,” Rama Rao said, during a meet-the-press programme, organised by the Telangana Union of Working Journalists.
Explaining his comment, Rama Rao said “a BC CM does not mean welfare of BCs. Intention and implementation is what is required.”
He said by investing Rs 1,000 crore on the fishermen community, “The Chief Minister has created wealth of Rs 30,000 crore for the Mudiraj and Gangaputra communities in Telangana, which today tops in inland fisheries in the country. Just having a leader from a community is not enough.”
Rao added, “The President is from the ST community, does that mean that the lives of all STs have changed? That is never the case, what is more important than caste is the concern a leader has for people. The job of the Chief Minister is to have a vision and implement it as K. Chandrashekar Rao has done,” he said.
Rama Rao said “Maybe the BJP is looking for an excuse as it is certain to lose its deposits in 110 constituencies. Later it can blame BCs for its failures.”
The Congress party is tried, tested and thrown into the dustbin by the people. They pushed Telangana into a forced marriage in 1956 and for 58 years Telangana region suffered in Andhra Pradesh. The Congress spoke of a six-point formula and now says it has six guarantees. People are not fools to believe the Congress, which had done nothing for Telangana, he said.
On why people should reelect BRS for the third time, Rama Rao said that he can give a thousand reasons. “Let the opposition parties show one state they govern where the per capita income is higher than in Telangana, where every house gets drinking water, a state where power is supplied 24 hours to farmers, or a state where there is a medical college in every district,” he said.
“That is the difference between our Chief Minister and others. We are asking for votes on the basis of these. The others should say on what basis they can ask people to vote for them,” he said.
