Hyderabad: In a politically significant statement, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for providing “corruption-free” governance in the last two years of the NDA rule and termed him as “most popular” leader in the country.
While returning the compliment, Modi, who was on his maiden visit to the youngest state, said the Telangana CM has always been concerned about the development of his state. Stating that the Central government under Modi’s leadership was running “100 per cent corruption free”, Rao said, “The credit for running the corruption-free government goes to Modi. This will go down in history.” While welcoming the PM on his home turf, Rao termed him as “Bharat desh ke atyant lokpriya neta (very popular leader in India)”. The CM represents Gajwel Assembly constituency in the Telangana Assembly.
“We (Telangana State) are getting good cooperation from you (Modi) and also from your ministers,” Rao said while noting that the BJP had also played a role in formation of the state in 2014, when it was carved out of Andhra Pradesh. To this, Modi said, “Whenever the Chief Minister (Rao) has met me, he has spoken about the state’s development and about water related issues.” He is “emotional” on the water issue and appeared to have taken it as a mission, Modi said.
The PM said TRS had solidly backed the GST bill, passed by Rajya Sabha recently. Earlier, Modi launched phase-1 of ‘Mission Bhagiratha’, a flagship project of the TRS government aimed at providing piped drinking water to every household in the state. The PM unveiled a plaque in Medak district’s Komatibanda village in Gajwel and formally turned on a water tap on the premises to mark the occasion.
“Sadly, we only realise the importance of water when there is no access to it. As citizens it is our duty to conserve water,” Modi said. He said the Centre and the states were working shoulder-to-shoulder to take the nation to new heights of progress.
Rao requested Modi to provide one national project (irrigation) to Telangana and also set up All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in the state. The Chief Minister also heaped praises on Union Minister of State for Power, Piyush Goyal for helping to improve the power situation in Telangana.