Stating that the Budget introduced by the Centre on Thursday was "a budget of corporate forces and not a common man's budget", TPCC working president Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said that the budget had demoralised the Telangana people.
Speaking to the media at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday, Bhatti said, "Jaitley has shown empty hands to the Telugu states in the budget. The Centre has not fulfilled the assurances given during the division of the united state even though four years have passed. Why has Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao failed to spell his opinion on the budget? Has KCR colluded with Modi? Is the CM afraid of his crimes that Modi may use to fix him?"
He also wondered how only Rs 650 crores could be allotted to Telangana in a Rs 25 lakh-crore budget, and asked whether the BJP even considered Telangana a part of the country.
Another Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy also said that the state had been meted out injustice in the Budget. It was very unfair for the Centre to neglect Telangana, he said.
He also said that the Centre would bear 90% of the costs if a project got national status, but the TRS government was not demanding it for the Kaleswaram project and putting a huge burden on the Telangana people for its own gains, he alleged. He demanded that the Centre national status to the Kaleswaram project, and that the state government mount pressure on the Centre in this regard.