Centre must relook promises made to Telangana: KTR
Hyderabad: Industries Minister KT Rama Rao accused the Centre of cold-shouldering Telangana with respect to industrial and infrastructure projects. Despite little help from the Government of India, Telangana, contributed five per cent of the nation’s GDP, he said. “Telangana is punching above its weight. Our population might be small but our heart is big and […]
Hyderabad: Industries Minister KT Rama Rao accused the Centre of cold-shouldering Telangana with respect to industrial and infrastructure projects. Despite little help from the Government of India, Telangana, contributed five per cent of the nation’s GDP, he said.
“Telangana is punching above its weight. Our population might be small but our heart is big and so we continue to contribute and inspire the nation with our progressive policies. TS-iPASS was started seven years ago in the State and Government of India has now finally decided to launch a single-window system,” he said at the Manufacturing Excellence event organised by industry body CII.
Industrial corridors
“A performing State like Telangana has to be incentivised. We requested industrial corridors between Hyderabad and Bengaluru, Nagpur, Warangal and Vijayawada. None of the requests have been catered to,” he said.
“Telangana is contributing to nation-building. The taxes we pay help to improve the infrastructure in UP, Gujarat, and Bihar. Not even one-half of the taxes paid by Telangana come back to the State. GOI needs to relook the commitments they have made to Telangana and our sister-State Andhra Pradesh and honour them fully,” he said about the promise for offering incentives to all new industries coming up in TS and AP.
Mega clusters
“The Pharma City is 19,000 acre and Kakatiya Textile Park 1,200 acre. We have been pleading for support to these to ensure that self-reliant India campaign translates into jobs,” he said adding that Telangana many times represented the Centre for the ITIR, which was sanctioned before 2014. “The Centre scrapped the ITIR and there is no contingency plan. They have no clue on what needs to be done to ensure that IT continues to grow at the same pace at which it is growing,” the Minister expressed his ire.
No relief
Though the Centre had announced financial packages worth Rs 20 lakh crore for the enterprises to wriggle out of the Covid impact, they largely remained on paper and did not help the MSMEs at the ground level, he said adding that the packages should help businesses create more wealth and employment. Also, the production-linked incentives announced too did not help the MSMEs in Telangana, he said.
No new national-level institutions have been sanctioned for Telangana, which has been asking for an IIM, a National Institute of Design, an IIIT at Karimnagar, new medical colleges, and a tribal university among others. “Nothing seems to come to Telangana. Even a bullet train will only travel between Delhi and Mumbai via Gujarat and does not find its way to any part of South India, I don’t know why,” he said.
Investment magnet
Telangana attract investments worth Rs 2.2 lakh crore that created employment for over 16 lakh people. Even during the Covid, companies like Goldman Sachs, Kitex, Premier Energies, Gloster, Gokuldas Images, Integrated Gas Technologies, Pokarna Engineered Stone, Triton, Ivanti, Malabar Gold, and several others have chosen Telangana for their investments.
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