KTR faults Centre’s statement on scrapping ITIR, dubs it vengeance politics

He says Centre’s claim of sanctioning IT projects to TS is a blatant lie

Working president of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) K.T. Rama Rao has observed that the Centre’s statement in Parliament that the ITIR project sanctioned to Telangana was scrapped is an ample proof of the politics of vengeance being practised by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre.

In statement issued on Friday in response to Union Minister of State for IT and Skill Development Rajeev Chandrasekhar statement made in Parliament, Mr. Rama Rao, who also the Minister for IT, Industries and Urban Development, said the Centre had deceived the country by making false claims that several other projects equivalent to ITIR were sanctioned to Telangana.

The Union Minister had exposed the BJP’s DNA of spreading misinformation and lies blatantly one more time, Mr. Rama Rao said adding that in spite of requests made about 50 times the Centre had not sanctioned any IT project to Telangana to compensate scrapping of ITIR. The Centre had not trickled anything for the IT ecosystem development in Hyderabad and demanded that the Centre give a clarification on the loss suffered by Telangana in eight years due to scrapping of ITIR.

Had there been the ITIR project in place, the IT ecosystem in Hyderabad would have grown with sky as the limit, the TRS working president said and stated that the Centre had not given any funding even for developing the largest incubator, T-Hub II, that was completed by the State government with ₹450 crore investment.

The conspiracy of the BJP government at the Centre was so evident that it had not sanctioned at least one out of 22 software technology parks sanctioned recently, Mr. Rama Rao said. The youth of Telangana was observing the injustice being heaped on the State by the Centre, including the discrimination of the State in several issues.

Mr. Rama Rao explained that the UPA government at the Centre had sanctioned ITIR project to Hyderabad in 2008 and the project was approved in 2013. However, the BJP government led by Narendra Modi had shelved the ITIR project sanctioned to Hyderabad as it did with several other promises made to the State in the State Reorganisation Act.

He alleged that the Centre had not sanctioned any alternative project to ITIR to Telangana as it had no sincerity on IT industry development. He started that Telangana had made enviable progress which much higher than the country’s average in spite of the socioeconomic crisis resulted from the policy paralysis, demonetisation and lockdown and appealed to the Centre one more time to sanction a special project to Telangana in lieu of ITIR to prove its sincerity towards Telangana and its people.