Hyderabad: BJP state president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Thursday called the Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s first public gathering in Khammam, attended by three CMs of non-BJP states and other national leaders, "utter flop show," accusing the BRS leaders of trying to mobilise crowds in vain by paying them money to show the meeting as a grand success to the national leaders.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi on Thursday, Sanjay recalled that no one had mentioned the BRS party's ‘Ab Ki Baar Kisan Sarkar’ slogan and that, despite Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao's supposition that the BRS would win the 2024 elections, his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal said the Aam Aadmi Party would win, making it abundantly clear that the BRS does not have the support of the national leaders. “It is unfortunate that the Telangana CM did not even raise the Jai Telangana slogan at the Khammam meeting,” he said. Further, he accused the CM of “using the money he looted through the
liquor scam to bribe leaders from other parties and states to attend the
meeting”. Any leader who meets KCR once will not want to entertain him again, Sanjay stated, citing the absence of former Karnataka CM H.D. Kumara Swamy and former Bihar CM Nitsh Kumar. “They had both met KCR, but they've since disappeared. Those who attended the meeting on Wednesday will also not be seen again with him,” Sanjay said.
Rao took the three visiting CMs - Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi), Pinarayi Viajayan (Kerala), and Bhagwant Singh Mann (Punjab) - to the Yadadri temple “only to show how he is doing business with the temple. In fact, one of them did not even enter the temple”, he remarked. Sanjay responded to KCR's claims that the BJP government had failed to build projects to store 50,000 tmc of water by saying that the claim reeks of hypocrisy given that the CM was unable to finish projects that could utilise even half of the water allocated to Telangana in the Krishna and Godavari rivers. “Agricultural borewells in the state increased from 18 lakh in 2014 to 24 lakh now. If the KCR government provided irrigation to lakhs of acres in the last eight years, why would the number of borewells go up,” he asked.
Sanjay responded to Rao's declaration that he will abandon the Agnipath scheme by saying, "forget about Agnipath. Let KCR take up the recruitment of police forces in Telangana. Candidates are resorting to agitations because of silly and unrealistic conditions imposed by the Telangana government. Those who are questioning his policy are being lathi-charged.”
The state BJP president also found fault with the Chief Minister for deciding to inaugurate the newly-built Secretariat on his birthday. “If he truly loved Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, after whom the Secretariat was named, should inaugurate it on April 14 coinciding with Ambedkar's birthday,” he demanded.
