Hyderabad: Amid tense relation between Telangana government and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre, state chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) skipped Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video conferencing with chief ministers from other states on the COVID-19 crisis on January 13.
However, he assigned Telangana health minister T Harish Rao and chief secretary of Telangana Somesh Kumar to attend the Prime Minister’s video conference meeting.
This is not the first time that chief minister KCR has missed to attend Prime Minister Modi’s meetings. In February of last year, the KCR skipped a critical Niti Aayog meeting presided over by PM Modi, claiming health issues.
In March 2021, the chief minister again skipped Modi’s video conference with other chief ministers of the states on rising COVID-19 cases. Back then he assigned the chief secretary and health secretary to attend the meeting, claiming that he was too preoccupied with his reply on motion of thanks to the governor’s speech in the assembly.
While official sources said he was unable to attend the meeting due to health issues, political analysts see it as evidence of a growing rift between the state’s ruling party TRS and the BJP government at the national level.
A day before the video conference, KCR wrote a letter to Prime Minister Modi to show his dissatisfaction with the increase in fertilizer prices.
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