PM Modi Communal, TDP-Congress Alliance Unholy: KCR

Campaigning in several constituencies for his party candidates for the upcoming Telangana Assembly elections, TRS president K Chandrashekar Rao minced no words in his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

KCR alleged that Modi was caught in communal politics and was least bothered about Telangana's important issues, including increasing reservations for STs and minorities among several others. He vowed to even more aggressively fight for Telangana's interests at the Centre if the TRS won enough number of Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general elections. He also refuted comments by the opposition that the TRS and the BJP would form an alliance for the 2019 general elections.

KCR also came down harshly on the Congress-led alliance of opposition parties in the state. He said that the Congress and the TDP, the two main constituents of the alliance, had deliberately ignored the development of Telangana for several decades, and that trusting the governance of the state to those parties again would be a triumph of hope over experience.

Alleging that the TDP was an Andhra party, he said that Naidu had written as many as 37 letters to the Centre against the irrigation projects in Telangana, showing where his loyalties lay. He warned people about a return to the old gloomy days and non-development if the alliance was voted to power.

Speaking about the TRS rule over the past four-and-a-half years in the state, KCR said, "Ever since we came to power in 2014, we have been hard at work to turn Telangana into a golden state by resolving issues in a phased manner. We have introduced numerous welfare schemes for all sections of society, and ensured that the benefits of statehood have percolated down to the last family."

The TRS chief then dangling plenty of carrots for various sections of voters. He offered loan waivers and higher money under the Rythu Bandhu scheme for farmers, an unemployment allowance for all young people without jobs, and higher pensions for different sections of poor people. Specifically appelaing to government employees, he said that if the TRS was voted to power, employees' issues like a Pay Revision Commission (PRC) and interim relief (IR) would be given priority, that the retirement age would be increased from the existing 58 years to 61 years, and that a directorate for pensioners would be established in the state.