Minister Slams Governor For "Lying" On Medical Colleges

Telangana Minister for Health T Harish Rao slammed Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan for criticising the State government and "misleading the people" on the issue of medical colleges.

The minister advised the Governor to use her good offices with the union government to bring a tribal university and a rail coach factory to Telangana instead of criticising the State government.

On Sunday, the Governor had accused the State government of not applying for medical colleges under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana.

Soundararajan first tweeted praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi for building one medical college in every district across the country under the PMSSY.

"Amazing infrastructure to match international standards from honb @PMOIndia GoI funded visionary schemes PMSSY one medical college in every district across Nation. Such facilities will add on to promote medical tourism potential in future (sic)," she tweeted.

When a user questioned her over the Centre denying medical colleges to Telangana, Soundararajan blamed the State government claiming that it had failed to apply in time.

She quoted Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandavia and said, "When every state applied for new med colleges under PMSSY scheme Telangana failed to apply in time as stated by Union Health Minister (sic)," she tweeted.

Reacting sharply to the tweet, Rao slammed both the union government and the Governor for "misleading the people with contradictory statements", and uploaded the representation letters to the union government and videos of the then Telangana Health Minister Eatala Rajender seeking the sanction of medical colleges to Telangana.

Rao said that those letters and videos proved that it was completely false to claim that Telangana hadn't made any request for the sanction of new medical colleges, and alleged that the union government was in fact showing discrimination against Telangana in allocation of medical colleges.

He also asked the Governor to exert the pressure on the union government for bringing projects to Telangana.

"It would be a great help to the people of Telangana if Raj Bhavan reorients it's focus and pushes the Government of India for Tribal University and Rail Coach factory as promised in Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014 (sic)," Rao tweeted.