HYDERABAD: If former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu could manage to bring Microsoft chief Bill Gates and former US President Bill Clinton to Hyderabad to showcase the development he could achieve, the Telangana Government wants to make a similar attempt by inviting US President Barack Obama to the city.
IT Minister K T Rama Rao made a formal request in this regard to a delegation of US officials, who met him at the Secretariat on Tuesday.
The delegation was led by Puneet Talwar, the assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs in the US Government. It included Kenneth Handelman, deputy assistant secretary of state in defence trade controls office; Atul Keshap, deputy assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia; and Michael Mullins, consul-general in Hyderabad.
“As the US President will be visiting India to attend the Republic Day celebrations, we would like Obama to visit Hyderabad,” Rao told the delegation.
“South India is much more developed than North India and if the US President visits Hyderabad, he will get to know the actual development of the country,” Rao said and briefed the US delegation about Hyderabad’s development in industrial and IT sectors and also mentioned about the city being listed as the second best place to visit by Traveler magazine of the National Geographic.
The US delegation told the minister that their country was ready to expand its economic ties with India, an official release said.