‘Won’t compromise on water share’

metro india news  I hyderabad

Minister for IT and Industries Duddilla Sridhar Babu on Wednesday reiterated that Telangana would not compromise on its rightful share of river waters, accusing the previous BRS government of causing serious loss to the State in water allocation.

Speaking to the media after the ‘Face-to-Face Interaction with the Minister’ programme at Gandhi Bhavan, Sridhar Babu said the Telangana government would attend the Godavari River Management Board (GRMB) meeting and strongly fight for the State’s rightful share of water.

He also criticised BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao for allegedly misleading people with false claims. Sridhar Babu challenged K.T. Rama Rao to disclose the price fetched by the paddy cultivated at former Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s farmhouse.

Furthermore, he claimed that the current Congress administration had allotted land at a rate of Rs 1.5 crore per acre, whereas the previous BRS government had granted land for Rs 90 lakh per acre. The Minister said land allotments made by the present government were carried out in accordance with prescribed rules. He stated that five acres of land had been allotted for Rs 7.5 crore and asked K.T. Rama Rao to explain how he arrived at a valuation of Rs 200 crore.

Expressing confidence that the Hyderabad Investment and Land Transformation (HILT) policy would benefit the people of Hyderabad, Sridhar Babu said it was inappropriate for K.T. Rama Rao to create fear among industrialists or obstruct Telangana’s development.

He advised the BRS working president not to vent his political anger against the Congress government on the people of Telangana. The Minister further claimed that people had rejected what he described as the BRS’s “Goebbels-style propaganda”, citing the party’s defeats in the Lok Sabha and local body elections as evidence.