What Telangana does today, India does tomorrow: KTR at Meet the Press

HYDERABAD: Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president KT Rama Rao (KTR) has said that the party is seeking votes in the name of development to come back to power in Telangana for the third consecutive time.

Speaking at 'Meet the Press' event at the Basheerbagh Press Club on Saturday, KTR said, "At one point in time, there was a saying that whatever Bengal does today, India does tomorrow. Today, Telangana has replaced the word Bengal."

Elaborating on the Telangana model of development, KTR said, "The Telangana model is holistic, integrated, inclusive and balanced model. Today, Telangana has done better than the rest of 27 States in India. Telangana is number one in per capita income of people which has increased to Rs 3,17,000 this year from Rs 1,24,000 in 2014."

He added that uniqueness of Telangana was all communities are living peacefully without being discriminated like in other States of India.

Sharing details about the governance model of Telangana, KTR said, "When you look at Debt:GSDP ratio, Telangana is in the bottom 5 states in the 23rd spot and in top 5 states when it comes to capital expenditure. The opposition is running a false campaign that Telangana is in debt. The fact is that every rupee of debt has been diverted to the productive sector like power and in schemes like Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya. It will pay off. Telangana is the only State to give 24 hours power supply to farmers.

"Telangana has achieved a balance between welfare and development. While the State gets the second highest awards for urban development in Centre's Swaach Sarvekshan, 2.5 per cent population of India lives in Telangana which gets 30 per cent awards for rural development. Telangana is in the top 3 States in Ease of Doing Business."

The Minister added that Telangana suffered for 58 years due to the sin committed by the Congress of integrating Telangana with Andhra Pradesh but things changed post bifurcation.

"Between 2004 and 2014, Congress only generated 24,000 jobs. From 2014 till now, 1,30,000 jobs have been given. In fact Hyderabad has overtaken Bengaluru in the field of IT and IT exports have increased by 400 per cent," he said.

Attacking the BJP, KTR asked, "What happened to the 2 crore jobs per year that Narendra Modi promised? He said that Rs 15 lakhs will be deposited in the account of the poor. Where has this gone? What happened to his promises that he will double the income of farmers, make the country a five trillion dollar economy, and build houses for all the poor in the country? Has all that happened?"

KTR concluded that the BRS was seeking mandate for the third time speaking about the what they have delivered and requested the public to vote for development.