HYDERABAD: Taking a serious view of the frontal attack by the TRS on procurement of Rabi and Kharif rice, the BJP has decided to launch a searing counter-offensive with all guns blazing. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who conferred with Union Minister G Kishan Reddy and party MPs from Telangana, including BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, at his chamber in Parliament on Tuesday, said that he would personally take charge of the attack on the TRS which was misleading the people on paddy procurement.
The BJP top leader said he would visit Telangana for two days and call the TRS’ bluff on paddy procurement and other issues. He asked the MPs and the BJP State president to draw up a programme for his two-day visit to explain to people the TRS’ political charade, which was intended only to cover its ineptness in handling the paddy issue. Amit Shah’s seriousness about the TRS upping the ante against the BJP is being seen as the saffron party’s first decisive step to take the pink party by its horns ahead of the Assembly elections, which are less than two years away in 2023.
The saffron brigade wants to be seen as the only party that can measure up to TRS in the electoral battlefield, and not the Congress which anyway is not out of the woods yet. The party’s decision to go for KCR’s jugular is also intended to dispel the notion that has been created by the Congress that both the BJP and TRS had tacit understanding to help each other out contrary to their public posturing.
At the meeting with BJP MPs from Telangana, which was also attended by Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal, Amit Shah sounded categorical that the party leaders should not spare the TRS, come what may. He advised them to ignore the Centre-State relations which had no bearing on BJP’s political programmes.
He wanted all of them to also expose the “corrupt deeds” of KCR and the paddy scam that has surfaced in the State. “You must give, not one but four befitting replies to each charge made against the BJP by TRS,” Amit Shah said and pointed out that they should seek inquiry into the scams that the TRS top leader is involved. “The bottom line is that you should be in the midst of people and expose the hollowness of TRS government’s claims in paddy procurement,” Shah said.
He was highly appreciative of Sanjay Kumar’s padayatra and expressed delight in Eatala Rajender winning the Huzurabad Assembly seat in the recent byelection on BJP ticket. Piyush Goyal explained to the MPs the Centre’s stand on paddy procurement in Telangana and how the TRS government was distorting it to cover up its failures. “The Telangana CM was speaking white lies on paddy procurement. You should set the record straight by explaining to people the actual picture,” he said.