In a major departure from years of rancour and bad blood over the issue, Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao today finally acknowledged the TDP's and Chandrababu Naidu's oft-repeated claim that as Chief Minister in undivided Andhra Pradesh, it was Naidu who had envisioned Hyderabad as a global IT capital.
"Naidu gets the credit for going to the USA all those years back when the city was much lesser known and persuading Bill Gates to bring Microsoft to Hyderabad, and I had no contribution," he candidly said.
Addressing a workshop at Tech Mahindra's Mission Innovation 2018 event at Hitex on Thursday, the IT Minister said that it was Naidu who had made Hyderabad a world IT hub, playing a key role in bringing several IT companies here.
Tech Mahindra CEO C P Gurnani and Vice-President A S Murty, Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh and others attended the workshop.
The rather dramatic acknowledgement could mean that the ruling parties of the two Telugu states are coming together.
KTR did say that Hyderabad's geography, infrastructure and cosmopolitan make-up helped Naidu, but it was still a major concession to the TDP boss and AP CM, and something that could not have come off the cuff. For example, it is a statement that is likely to soften the attitude of a lot of Andhra- / Rayalaseema-origin people living in Telangana to the TRS and KTR in particular, and that might be a calculation.
filed in:Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, Information Technology, TDP