Kishan Reddy rakes up medical college issue again
Union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy Continues the trend of contradictory statements by Union Ministers on medical colleges being allotted by the Centre to Telangana
Hyderabad: Continuing the trend of contradictory statements by union Ministers on medical colleges being allotted by the Centre to Telangana, union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy once again said the State was not allotted new medical colleges as it did not submit any proposals for new medical colleges under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for establishment of new medical colleges.
“All the BRS Ministers are lying. They did not apply for new medical colleges and are now blaming the Centre. They have now been exposed. I myself had written a letter to the Chief Minister requesting him to send a proposal. There was no response to the letter,” Kishan Reddy said on Tuesday.
This is in stark contrast to what union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said last month, when she claimed that medical colleges were not allotted to Telangana as the State government proposed districts that already have medical colleges.
Interestingly, Kishan Reddy’s claim comes just a few days after Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan made a similar allegation, though her own tweets and statements in the past exposed the falsity of her claim.
Soundararajan had earlier tried to give credit to the Prime Minister for construction of the government medical college at Nagarkurnool, though the college was completely funded by the State government. Twitter users had then too shared a letter written by the union Health Minister to the State government acknowledging an application for upgradation of the existing government hospitals in Khammam and Karimnagar into medical colleges. In a letter written on August 30, 2019 to the then State Health Minister Eatala Rajender, the then union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had said that Telangana was not covered under Phase-I and Phase-II of the CSS, and that the State’s application would be considered in Phase-III. The same letter proves Kishan Reddy also to be wrong.
Kishan Reddy also claimed on Tuesday that the Centre had released Rs.1,028 crore for the Bibinagar AIIMS and that the State was ‘not cooperating’. He alleged that since the State government did not make available the layout of the old building, the Centre was forced to construct a new one increasing the cost of the project.
This claim was proved wrong earlier this week, when Health Minister T Harish Rao, countering the Governor’s statement, pointed out that Telangana had received only Rs.156 crore of Rs.1,365 crore for the Bibinagar AIIMS.
