HYDERABAD: As decided by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao during Sunday’s TRS Parliamentary Party meeting, all the pink party MPs boycotted the President’s address to both the Houses of Parliament on Monday. The TRS MPs stayed away from the address on the inaugural day of the Budget session of Parliament in protest against the short shrift that the Telangana State had been getting from the Centre in respect to funds and projects.
The MPs were asked by the Chief Minister to pummel the Centre at every given opportunity in the Parliament since there has been no cooperation from it in any respect. The State was sore over the Centre withholding funds to the tune of Rs 32,000 crore and also not honouring the commitments made to Telangana in the AP State Reorganisation Act, 2014.
The CM had asked his MPs to corner the Centre on 23 issues pertaining to Telangana. Boycotting the President’s address is being seen as an irrevocable step that the TRS has taken in its fight against BJP at the Centre in the wake of the Opposition criticism that the rivalry between the two parties is only public posturing and that they were in fact friends in secret.
‘Ruining federal structure’
At the all-party meeting held on Monday afternoon, TRS Parliamentary Party leader K Keshava Rao and TRS leader in Lok Sabha Nama Nageswara Rao took the Centre to task for ruining the federal structure of the country. Nageswara Rao took exception to the new trend which did not bode well for democracy. The two leaders pointed out that the Centre was deliberately starving the State by withholding funds due to it.
Referring to the promises made for Telangana in the AP State Reorganisation Act, 2014, Nageswara Rao said that it was the duty of the Centre to implement each and every assurance given. Another incontrovertible evidence of the Centre’s step-motherly treatment was when it omitted Telangana while announcing medical colleges for various other states. Similarly, national project status has not been given either to Kaleshwaram or ITIR. Though Niti Aayog had recommended sanction of Rs 24,000 crore for Mission Bhagiratha, the Centre remained indifferent, the two leaders alleged.
Issues irking TRS
Among the main issues at stake are lack of initiative in the division of the institutions listed in the Schedule 9 and 10, delimitation of Assembly constituencies, grant payable for development of backward areas, hiking quota for Muslims and STs, no response to the plea for categorisation of SCs and silence on the State’s demand that the Centre should not interfere in the transfer of All India Service officers.