Raising eyebrows in political circles, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president and Telangana state minister K Taraka Rama Rao is meeting several Union ministers in Delhi, including Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh.
According to his office, he is on a two-day tour to put pressure on the central government regarding unresolved issues in Telangana. At a time when the BRS is being accused of being a B-team of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), these meetings assume significance.
KTR had alleged repeatedly in the past that the Centre had ignored Telangana in the past nine years. In this visit, he intends to persuade the central ministers to provide support to various projects in his state. He met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh regarding construction of skywalks in the Secunderabad cantonment area, an issue that has created friction between the two parties. It is a project initiated under the Strategic Road Development Plan. The minister had earlier said that though the Telangana government is dedicated to developing infrastructure, lack of cooperation from the Centre had put a spanner in various projects. He alleged that the construction of skywalks had been pending for nine years due to non-allocation of defence land.
In a press conference in Delhi on Friday, KTR said: “The Defence department had said that they will give 96 acres of land for the construction of skywalk towards Rajiv road and another 56 acres of land towards Medchal, but there has been no response. The skywalk project started in Mehdipatnam was stalled due to defence department’s constraints. We also asked for reserve land required for Golkonda, Ibrahim Bhag link roads. We have been appealing regarding these issues to the Centre for the past 10 years without fail from our side. We hope they will respond positively this time.”
“We are meeting Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri tomorrow. We will appeal for expansion of metro rail from Lakdikapool to BHEL and metro from Nagole to LB Nagar. We have successfully completed many programs under SRDP. If three to four acres of land is provided by the Home Department at Rasoolpura, the SRDP project will be completed there. There was no response to Union minister G Kishan Reddy’s repeated appeals in this regard. We are trying to meet Amit Shah in this regard.”
“The central government, which has given metros to about 10 small towns in Uttar Pradesh, should explain why it does not want to cooperate with the metro in Hyderabad. Kishan Reddy should tell why the Centre did not cooperate when there were floods in Hyderabad, why did it fund Gujarat or other BJP states,” the minister said.
Additionally, the road development programmes in Rasoolpura requires land under the Home Department. KTR may discuss the necessary steps for this with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Furthermore, there is a possibility of a meeting with either Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia or VK Singh from the Central Government to discuss issues related to Mamnoor Airport in Warangal. It’s an airport from the Nizam-era and the state plans to revive it by acquiring 400 acres of land. The present runway of 1.8 km needs to be expanded to 3.9km for large aircraft to land. The government has been on it since 2018 and there were several meetings between state and Central authorities regarding this.
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