Telangana caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao lashed out against his Andhra Pradesh counterpart and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday. Shortly after announcing a partial manifesto of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) for the upcoming Assembly polls, KCR began his tirade by calling Naidu a ‘udumu’ (monitor lizard) and accused him of creating a rift between people from Telangana and people from Andhra who are settled in Telangana.
KCR was addressing the media at Telangana Bhavan, the headquarters of the TRS. Responding to a question about his recent attack on Andhra settlers during a campaign rally in Nalgonda, KCR claimed that he was not referring to the Andhra settlers in Telangana, quickly adding that such people belonged to Telangana.
“I want to tell one thing to my Andhra friends: Claim yourselves as Telanganites, don’t brand yourselves as Andhra people. I have reiterated this many times. Has there been any problem in these four years between the two groups before Chandrababu Naidu came here? We have been living like brothers,” KCR said.
KCR also pointed out that Naidu and TDP leaders spread panic that if TRS came into power, they would drive out Andhra people from Telangana. “Has that happened?” the caretaker CM asked.
Alleging that Naidu didn’t implement his poll promises in Andhra, KCR said, “Chandrababu Naidu is a ‘shani’ (bane) to Andhra people. Why did he come here?”
KCR also expressed confidence that he would win the upcoming elections, and said that the result of the elections has already been decided by the public.
“Congress and TDP are still calculating 70 or 80 seats for themselves and here the TRS is seeing whether we will get slightly more than 100 seats or not, out of the total 119 seats in the Assembly,” KCR said.
When asked about Rahul Gandhi campaigning in the state, KCR said, “Why would I be afraid of Rahul Gandhi? I was the one who dissolved the cabinet and went for early elections. Without having guts and making certain calculations, would I go for elections?”
He further warned the Congress that he would not let them get away during this term. “Last term, we didn’t touch them, though we know about all the ones who are corrupt. We have a file also ready. Because people might assume that I’m playing vindictive politics without bothering about the people, we didn’t touch them previous term. In this term, I won’t leave anyone. We will expose their corruption.”