KCR Meets Jaitley, Seeks Special Status For State

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao called on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley In New Delhi on Saturday and strongly pitched for Special Status and tax sops for the new State of Telangana.

Briefing media persons after the meeting, TRS MP B Vinod Kumar said that the Union Finance Minister was told that being a new State, Telangana deserved special treatment from the Centre.

Of the 10 districts in the State, 8 were backward, and therefore the Planning Commission should give special consideration to Telangana, KCR argued.

He hoped that Telangana would be given special financial assistance in the Supplementary Budget to be introduced in the forthcoming session of Parliament.

KCR also complained to Jaitley that the oil companies including Indian Oil Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation were paying taxes in Andhra Pradesh. He made this clarification to clear the Finance Minister's assumption that Hyderabad was getting plenty of revenues.

KCR said that all the PSUs in united Andhra Pradesh were paying taxes in Hyderabad. However, after bifurcation they were paying the taxes to AP, depriving Telangana of huge revenues.

Vinod Kumar also informed that the Telangana government's representative in New Delhi Venugopal Chary would meet Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal as the latter was not available in Delhi.

The TRS MP also claimed that the TRS government had taken initiatives to generate 6,000 MW of power in the next 3 years.

He accused the previous Congress and TDP regimes for the existing power crisis in Telangana, and said that both the parties had neglected the power generation situation in the region while in power.

He also ridiculed the bus yatra taken up by the TDP, and asked its leaders to stage a dharna at the Lower Sileru Project demanding more power supply from AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. (INN)