Hyderabad: In a statement that is likely to hurt the ruling Congress, party MLA J Anirudh Reddy said that Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s “coverts were ruling the roost in Hyderabad”, whether it was in securing irrigation projects, or road contracts.
The Jadcherla Congress made these comments during an official programme held in his constituency, which was captured in a video and has gone viral. It may be noted that Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy is still considered to be close to Naidu by some. Many see Revanth as a protege of Naidu from when he was in the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief.
Post the bifurcation of AP and Telangana in 2014, Revanth Reddy was in fact the working president of the TDP before he joined the Congress in 2018.
In his piece of advice to irrigation minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy on preventing AP from going ahead with it’s proposed Polavaram-Banakacherla Link Project (PBLP), Anirudh Reddy said that if electricity and water supply to those contractors was disconnected and if they were not paid a single rupee for irrigation contracts, “they would all automatically go to Naidu and the project will be stalled within a week”.
He was apparently referring to the contractors from Andhra Pradesh, who he felt, were still enjoying considerable clout in Telangana. The Congress MLA opined that Uttam Kumar Reddy writing letters to the Centre will not deter those Andhra contractors from building PBLP, and the only way to stop them was to cut-off their financial resources in Telangana.
It may be noted that one of the bigger companies, Megha Engineering Private Ltd, has had irrigation contracts both for the Kaleshwaram project in Telangana and also for the Polavaram project in AP.
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