TRS Slams Digvijaya Singh For Blocking Projects

Telangana Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao today lambasted Congress national leader Digvijaya Singh and other leaders of his Party for their remarks alleging corruption, wastage and promotion of defections by the TRS government.

Addressing the media at the Secretariat on Saturday, the minister said, "The Congress, itself noted for corruption, talking against the same amounts to the Devil chanting the scriptures. The Party is synonymous with corruption, and most of its governments have indulged in rampant corruption. And they have also encouraged political defections innumerable times - in fact, it is double standards for Digvijaya Singh to cry foul about political defections as he himself had offered Congress shawls to 11 TRS MLAs in the past."

Rao also said that Singh had no right to talk of family rule in the Telangana government as he had gotten his own son and younger brother to become MLAs, and as he was also a well-known minion of the Congress' ruling Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, which epitomized family rule.

"Making baseless charges against the TRS government does not befit Singh's stature," he said.

He also ridiculed the Congress leaders' demand to replicate their 10-year "misrule", that he claimed did nothing for the welfare of the people and only wrecked the State. He sought to know whether welfare schemes like pensions, Kalyana Lakshmi, Shaadi Mubarak and the Rs 1-a-kg rice scheme weren't far better in their impact on the downtrodden sections compared to those during the Congress rule.

Rao also lashed out at the Congress leaders for "hatching a conspiracy" against the projects and other developmental works in the State, and said that Singh's "provocative" statement advising the Telangana Congress leaders to move court against the Mallanna Sagar project was another example of that.

"Unmindful of the Congress leaders' treacherous attempts to block the development of the State and despite the legal hurdles being thrown by the Opposition, we are firm in our intent to complete the projects and developmental works for the irrigation of one crore acres, revival of lakes and offering drinking water to all villages, including the fluoride-hit Nalgonda district," he said. He vowed to complete the projects, and said the government was ready to implement either the GO 123 or the Land Acquisition Act 2013 to compensate the victims of the Mallanna Sagar project.

When asked about the suspected ISIS terrorists being caught in the city recently, Rao said that the law would take its own course. He parried a query on why the TRS was going soft on its ally the MIM, which had openly come forward to offer legal support to the alleged terrorists.