HYDERABAD: BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Sunday blamed Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for the inordinate delay in completing the 125-foot statue of Dr BR Ambedkar at Necklace Road. The Chief Minister had announced the statue on April 14, 2016, promising that it would be the first of its kind in the country.
Sanjay, who along with other BJP leaders inspected the construction works of the Ambedkar Memorial near NTR Ghat on Sunday, told media persons later that Chandrasekhar Rao had merely repeated his announcement a year later, on Ambedkar Jayanti in 2017.
“He has turned a blind eye towards the statue after that. Since then, the Chief Minister had never bothered to attend Ambedkar’s birth and death anniversary programmes,” the BJP MP said. He claimed that it was only after immense pressure from BJP, along with leaders of various Dalit and other people’s organisations over the Ambedkar statue installation, that the TRS government announced the release of `146 crore on September 17, 2020.
“There has been not much progress regarding the Ambedkar statue works. Nobody knows whether these works would ever be completed. Forget about the 125-ft statue, there are no indications of installing a 45-ft statue,” Sanjay said.
Demanding Rao to complete the installation of the statue as promised at the earliest and also implement all the promises he had made to Dalits, the BJP leader warned that his party would wage a statewide agitation if the Chief Minister did not fulfil the demand.