Congress Wants Ivanka To Frequent City To Keep It Clean

Mohammed Ali Shabbir, Leader Of Opposition in the Telangana Legislative Council, slammed the Telangana government for (what he termed as its) waking up and deciding to clean up and beautify the city for the sake of visiting US dignitary Ivanka Trump - something it did not think the citizens themselves deserved.

Shabbir Ali said that as soon as the GHMC elections in 2016 were over, KCR stopped being bothered about the complaints of Hyderabad's citizens. The citizens had trusted his campaign promises and given the TRS a landslide victory in the polls, but he and his son KTR forgot about the assurances almost instantly, he alleged. Forget enhancement of the city, the TRS government had remained unmoved by even basic infrastructure going for a toss in the during the rains due to the potholes and drainage water on the main roads, traffic jams and crashed trees.

But for 36 hours of the US President's daughter's visit during the three-day Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 in Hyderabad, the state government was spending huge amounts to blacktop the roads, beautify the sidewalks and remove ugly edifices, Shabbir Ali said. KCR had developed a peculiar attitude of caring only about foreigners' opinions, another clear example being the CM himself saying on many occasions that foreigners were laughing at the Secretariat and that was why he wanted to demolish it and build a new one, going to the extent of functioning from his camp office Pragathi Bhavan by acquiring nearby land rather than work from the Secretariat where the state government machinery was based, Shabbir Ali claimed.

He quipped that given all this he wanted Trump to come visiting Hyderabad often - once in two to three months. "If she comes often, and keeps visiting new areas each time, at least the roads and footpaths in Hyderabad will be clean and free of vendors and encroachments, the medians will stay freshly painted, and there will be greenery, colourful garbage stacks, spittoons etc," he said.