KCR taking BJP leadership by the horns: Vineet Narain

By Anil Kumar Hyderabad: With winds of change blowing across the nation and opposition parties joining hands to overthrow the Bharatiya Janata Party from power at the Centre, Telangana Chief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi) supremo K Chandrashekhar Rao is emerging as a leader who could take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi […]

By Anil Kumar

Hyderabad: With winds of change blowing across the nation and opposition parties joining hands to overthrow the Bharatiya Janata Party from power at the Centre, Telangana Chief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi) supremo K Chandrashekhar Rao is emerging as a leader who could take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and provide an alternative leadership, feels senior journalist and anti-corruption activist Vineet Narain.

In an exclusive chat with Telangana Today over phone from New Delhi, Narain, whose PIL in the 1993 Jain Hawala case prompted the Supreme Court to frame rules for autonomy of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said Chandrashekhar Rao was a leader who is taking the BJP leadership by the horns.

“He is very vocal against the anti-people policies of BJP and openly challenging them,” he said, adding that he had met Chandrashekhar Rao on a few occasions and found him to be a person who has the ability to deliver and take tough decisions.

“From whatever information I got through my reliable sources, I find KCR to be a focused leader and delivering whatever he says. Hence, his foray into national politics could have significant effect,” Narain said.

Appreciating the Telangana Model of development, Vineet Narain said that though he got very less opportunity to tour the State to see the development works and programmes being implemented by the Chandrashekhar Rao-government, the feedback he got through reports and former bureaucrats had convinced him that KCR was ‘doing a good job’ and fulfilling the promises made by his government.

“I am an investigative journalist. I do not go by publicity. I personally found out about the works being done by the Telangana government. I am now convinced that KCR is doing good work,” he said.

Commenting on the Gujarat Model of development, the senior journalist alleged that the model was a hoax and a publicity stunt to mislead people. “If Gujarat Model was so successful, why should the government construct a wall around all the slums during former American President Donald Trump’s visit to the State. It speaks volumes of the flaws in the model,” he said.

On the BJP brand of politics, Narain expressed concern over the way things were moving in the country and said the BJP government at the Centre was functioning in an anti-democratic manner and was thoroughly corrupt.

“BJP has weakened all the institutions and constitutional bodies. There is no check on corruption,” he stated. He also said BJP was harassing opposition parties and not allowing them to function democratically. “BJP is creating chaos in the country. They are creating fear among opposition party leaders. The opposition is so afraid that they are not able to even register their protest. KCR is among the few leaders who are vocal against them and challenging them,” he said.

Most of the changes that the BJP was claiming as development were are only event management, he claimed. Citing the example of the Swatch Bharat initiative, Narain said though huge amounts were spent on publicity for the initiative, it had failed to get the desired results. “Despite the Swatch Bharat programme, New Delhi is still full of dirt. All the efforts and money have gone waste,” he pointed out.

On misusing of Central investigation agencies by the Centre, Vineet Narain stated that all the government has misused central agencies, but the present BJP government was has crossed all limits. He alleged that the Centre was using Central investigation agencies to settle political scores. “Why are only opposition party leaders being targeted by the investigation agencies, that too before polls. Just because the agencies are not charge-sheeting BJP leaders, it does not mean that they are clean,” he stated.