Harish Rao slams Centre for not announcing flood relief to Telangana

Sangareddy: Finance Minister T Harish Rao lashed out at the BJP-led union government for not announcing any flood relief to Telangana though the State was hit by heavy rains.

Addressing the gathering after laying a foundation for Rs 50 crore works in Sangareddy Municipality here on Tuesday, the Minister said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has personally visited the flood-affected areas and announced the Rs 10,000 cash, 20KGs rice, 5KGs red gram as immediate relief to each family affected by floods. While our Chief Minister was visiting the flood-affected areas, Rao said, the Congress and BJP party leaders were criticising the State government sitting safely at their homes.

Accusing the Centre of giving funds to all the flood-affected States as an immediate measure, the Minister said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not made any announcement for support to Telangana as the river Godavari had got one of the worst floods ever in history. Objecting to the recent statement of the Prime Minister on free welfare schemes to the poor, Rao accused the Centre of denying welfare schemes to the poor and waving off lakhs of crores of rupees to corporates. Literally, he said, the BJP government was cheating and looting the poor, just to benefit the rich. The Minister demanded Modi come up with what kind of welfare schemes the union government wanted to see the States discontinue.

However, Rao said that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government under the leadership of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao was very much committed to continuing all the welfare schemes since they wanted to uplift the poor.

In a chit-chat with the reporters later, Harish Rao said that the Centre was conspiring to stop the release of MNREGS funds to the Telangana government as they did to West Bengal. Though Telangana had got the best State award five out of seven years for effectively implementing MNREGS, Rao said that the Centre had deputed many teams to check the accuracy of MNREGS implementation this year. He has accused the BJP-led union government of developing a conspiracy against Telangana and its people.

Later, in another programme in Patancheru, Harish Rao said the union government was cheating the youth by not taking up recruitment of jobs in the government sector. While Telangana had taken up the recruitment of the 2.5 lakhs in the last eight years, Rao said that there were 16.5 lakh posts lying vacant in different departments of the union government.