It has become a habit for the Telangana Rashtra Samithi leaders to make cheap comments against the Andhra Pradesh government, though it is a matter of courtesy that one state doesn’t comment on the administrative issues of other states.
On Thursday, it was the turn of Telangana finance minister T Harish Rao to run down the Andhra Pradesh government.
While claiming credit for adopting pro-employee measures, Harish Rao said the employees in Andhra are suffering under the present government.
“When the teachers in Andhra Pradesh took up agitation seeking solution to their demands, their state government booked cases against them and threw them behind bars. But in Telangana, our government has given them 73 per cent hike in their salaries in the last five years,” Harish Rao claimed.
Similarly, the minister found fault with the Jagan Mohan Reddy government for surrendering to the centre on electricity reforms for the sake of additional loans.
“Like Jagan, if we, too, accepted the conditions imposed by the Centre, we would have been allowed to borrow Rs 6,000 crore more loans and introduced more schemes,” he said.
Harish Rao pointed out that just because Telangana had not succumbed to the pressures of the centre on installation of meters to the agriculture pump sets as done by Andhra Pradesh, the Centre had stopped grants to the extent of Rs 30,000 crore to Telangana.
“But, we have kept the welfare of all sections of people unlike the neighbouring state,” he said.
In the past, too, Harish Rao said he had heard about frequent power cuts in Andhra Pradesh.
“On coming to know about it, I felt Telangana is far better than many other states, including AP,” he said.