Hyderabad: Energy minister Jagadish Reddy admitted on Tuesday that the Telangana government miss the Rs 25,000 crore loan facility for five years due to its refusal to implement the Centre's power sector reforms.
The Centre has offered to increase the FRMB limit to raise loans for states by 0.5 per cent of GSDP if states install meters for agriculture pump sets in five years from 2020-21 to 2024-25. "The Telangana government can raise additional loans of Rs 5,000 crore every year, totalling Rs 25,000 crore in five years if it agrees to install meters to agriculture pump sets. But chief minister Chandrashekar Rao has rejected the offer in the interest of farmers as well as the marginalised sections of society, to whom the TRS government extends free power,” the minister claimed.
The Andhra Pradesh government is installing meters to raise additional loans. Our CM decided to forego additional loans for the benefit of the farmers and the poor here," Reddy told the media here on Tuesday.
Reddy urged Union minister Kishan Reddy and BJP state president Bandi Sanjay to answer the questions raised by the CM at his press conference on Sunday.
"The CM has released proof to the media on how the Centre is forcing states to install meters to agriculture pump sets by linking the FRBM loan limit with the implementation of power sector reforms. Instead of answering them, Kishan and Sanjay are raising irrelevant issues like India-Pakistan tussle, surgical strikes etc," Reddy said.
Expressing confidence that CM will unite all parties in the country against BJP, Reddy said, "When KCR launched TRS to achieve statehood for Telangana in 2001, he was alone. But within ten years, he made all the parties including TDP and the Left, which all had opposed the creation of the Telangana state, to say "Jai Telangana" and achieved the aim of having a Telangana state. In a similar manner, KCR will be successful this time in uniting all parties against the BJP and bring down the BJP government at the Centre in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls," he hoped.
