Telangana was barren under Andhra Pradesh without irrigation facilities, which forced him to start the separate-state initiative, said KCR.
Published Sep 17, 2023 | 1:52 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 17, 2023 | 1:52 PM
Former Telangana Chief Minister and BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao. (File photo/Supplied)
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Sunday, 17 September, presented a report card on the progress achieved by the state during the last nine and half years of his rule, with a special emphasis on the irrigation sector.
“The Telangana government has set a target for itself to irrigate 1.25 crore acres in the next three to four years,” he said.
The chief minister also dwelt on the apparent foundation laid for Hyderabad to grow into a global city by maintaining law and order and improving infrastructure. He warned disruptive forces that they would meet their Waterloo.
KCR was delivering the Telangana National Integration Day address at the Public Garden, marking the anniversary of the then Hyderabad state merging with the Indian Union in 1948, more than a year after India attained independence from the British.
Live: సెప్టెంబర్ 17, జాతీయ సమైక్యతా దినోత్సవం సందర్భంగా జాతీయ జెండాను ఎగురవేస్తున్న సీఎం శ్రీ కేసీఆర్. https://t.co/1PL0CQIrhL
— BRS Party (@BRSparty) September 17, 2023
Apparently keeping in view the approaching Telangana Assembly elections, the chief minister dwelt mostly on how the state had struck a balance between development and welfare and ensured that no sector lagged in progress and no slice of the population was untouched by welfare schemes.
The chief minister, recalling the injustice meted out to Telangana after it was merged with Andhra Pradesh in 1956, said that under Andhra leaders, the state did not get the attention it deserved.
Consequently, the entire Telangana remained barren without any irrigation facility, which forced him to take up the initiative of leading a movement for a separate state, he said.
“After the creation of Telangana state, I thought I had done my duty. But later on, the responsibility of the reconstruction of Telangana state was thrust on my shoulders,” said KCR.
He added that it was a cause for concern that the country was still struggling even after 76 years of independence.
“We still grapple with economic backwardness, poverty, unemployment, and social discrimination. The Telangana government, knowing the necessity of eradicating the last of the ills that have been ailing society, fought its way forward and achieved commendable success,” he claimed.
The BRS government’s motto had been to build wealth and distribute it among the people of the state.
“Poverty, which used to be 13.18 percent in 2015-18, had come down to 5.88 percent by 2019-21. In fact, the saying that ‘what Telangana does, India follows’ is true in every sense since it has made progress on all development indices,” he said.
The chief minister dwelt at length on the kind of injustice meted out to the erstwhile Mahabubnagar district.
The Palamuru Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme (PLIS), whose pumps he switched on on Saturday at Narlapur, would make the districts prosperous.
He said since the creation of Telangana state, the government had focused on pending irrigation projects and executed them one after the other in the Mahabubnagar district — including Nettempadu, Kalwakurthy, Bhima, and Koil Sagar — providing irrigation to the parched lands.
Now the agriculture labourers were not migrating to other states in search of livelihoods, he claimed. “In fact, there is now reverse migration,” he said.
He said that it was inhuman and cruel that when Mahabubnagar was reeling under the impact of drought in the past, the leaders in the united Andhra Pradesh set up gruel centres for the labourers.
The erstwhile Mahabubnagar district, which was once prosperous, had been reduced to a level where the people had to depend on gruel supplied by the government, he said.
Referring to the medical and health sector in the state, the chief minister said Telangana was witnessing a new revolution.
The Niti Aayog had already praised the state for occupying the third rank in the country in providing the best medical care to the poor, he noted.
The government was setting up one medical college in each district in the state, and 21 medical colleges had already been started, he said, adding that the recent Cabinet meeting cleared proposals for starting another eight medical colleges by next year.
When the Telangana state was created, there were only five government medical colleges offering 850 MBBS seats but now the number of seats has risen to 3,195, noted KCR.
He said that the government’s double-bedroom houses programme for the poor was a continuous process.
Already, 1 lakh houses that were ready for occupation were being distributed to the beneficiaries in Hyderabad and its surrounding areas, he noted.
He also unveiled the state government’s plan to ensure that the IT sector was promoted in tier-II cities much more extensively.
He said Telangana had made remarkable progress in the sector. When the state was formed in 2014, the number of IT employees was 3.23 lakh, but had since risen to 9.57 lakh, he noted.
The export of software products in 2014 was ₹57,000 crore, but was ₹2.4 lakh crore now.
The government was promoting infrastructure for the growth of the sector in the tier-II cities of Khamma, Warangal, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Mahabubnagr, and Siddipet.
