CM Revanth says he is ready to fast unto death for Telangana, dares KCR to join hands with him

Chief Minister Revanth Reddy says he is ready to fast unto death in New Delhi over Telangana's budget allocations, challenging K. Chandrasekhar Rao to join.

Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy has asserted that he is ready to stage fast unto death in New Delhi in protest against the Central Government’s discriminatory attitude towards Telangana, concerning the allocations made in the Union budget 2024 presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday.

He dared Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to join the protest asserting “let us decidewhether or not Telangana gets central funds through the stir”. The Chief Minister made these remarks on Tuesdayduring the discussion in the State Assemblyon the injustice meted out to Telangana in the budgetary allocations. He asked Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao to finalise the date and schedule to sit on dharna at Jantar Mantar in the national capital.

Taking a jibe at the BRS leadership, he said the Congress leaders never repeatedly claimed that they had put their lives at stake for Telangana nor did they ‘forget matchbox to set themselves ablaze’ and thereby instigated students to sacrifice their lives. The marathon discussion saw trading of charges and counter charges between the Congress and the BRS.

Initiating the discussion, Legislative Affairs Minister D. Sridhar Babu alleged that the Centre adopted step motherly attitude towards Telangana in allocation of funds for different projects. The Central Government did not take into cognizance several representations submitted by the Congress Government seeking implementation of the State’s justified demands. “The Centre’s attitude is highly dangerous and discriminatory. It has diluted the spirit of cooperative federalism,” he said wondering why Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not take the name of Telangana at least once in her more than two hour budget speech.

The Centre had ignored the assurances given to Telangana in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014 while it doled out largesse to another Telugu State Andhra Pradesh in the current budget. “We have no objections to Centre making allocations to AP, but we are objecting to the discrimination against Telangana,” he said.

The budget, he said, did not make mention about the requests made by Telangana Government and it had failed to give a road map for resolving the issues between the two States that had been pending for a decade. The NDA Government laid claims of achieving Viksit Bharat with US $5 trillion economy, but it would not be possible without Telangana which was the major growth engine of the country. “The self respect of Telangana has been betrayed going by the current budgetary allocations,” said Mr. Sridhar Babu.

The budget made reference to Visakhapatnam-Chennai industrial corridor and also made mention about Hyderabad-Bengaluru corridor. “But the main node of the Hyderabad-Bengaluru corridorwill be located in Andhra Pradesh despite 210 km of Telangana covered in it,” he said. He charged the Centre with adopting discriminatory attitude towards Telangana claiming that promises were showered on Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, the two States supporting the NDA government, ignoring the interests of Telangana.