In an open letter to Telangana IT and Industries Minister K T Rama Rao, Congress MP A Revanth Reddy today alleged that the minister and his party, the TRS, were "cheating" the people of the state by failing to question the Centre on the soaring prices of fuel in the country.
In his letter, Reddy also brought of KTR's recent decision to
support the ongoing protests against the privatisation of Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), and said that the minister had done so only to gain popularity among the people ahead of the upcoming MLC elections in two of Telangana's graduates' constituencies.
"When the TRS could not even support the agitation in Parliament against the spikes in the prices of fuel in India, how will it support the workers of the VSP? It has been tight-lipped about the Centre's failure to control fuel prices. So, the party's actions do not match its words. Can KTR explain the TRS MPs' silence on the issue? Is the TRS scared of Prime Minister Modi and his government? The party's MPs are not even attending the ongoing Parliament sessions," the MP charged.
Further, he faulted the TRS government for not fighting the Modi regime on its "unfulfilled" election-time promises, and asked, "Why are the pink party's MPs not questioning the PM about his forgotten election-time promises? It is laughable that KTR claims that he will lend his support to the VSP agitation when he cannot even ask the Centre to support his own state. If KTR or the TRS were really concerned by the Modi regime's lack of commitment to Telangana, they would have staged
an indefinite hunger strike in Delhi till the promises made to our people were fulfilled."
Reddy added that it had become a habit of the minister to talk about the rights of the state ahead of any kind of elections to gain mileage, and then forget about those same rights immediately after the polling.
He then reiterated his demand that KTR make clear his stand on the matter of holding a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
The Congress has been actively berating the Centre for the uncontrolled fuel price hikes. CLP leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka even launched a 213 km
bicycle rally to protest the price rise earlier this month.