HYDERABAD: Strongly criticising the TRS, Nara Lokesh on Friday said that Telan-gana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had no vision.
He said that Mr Rao did not go out of the city to visit any places and if he did, the farmers would drive him away. Stating that the likely future of the TRS in 2019 was very bleak, he said that any party that promoted hatred would never progress.
“I have every right to be critical of KCR. He is a person who is propagating hatred. They burnt down party offices and are sending SMSes to burn Opposition party offices. Nobody who has promoted hat-red against another reg-ion has ever progressed. Take North Korea for example, which propagates hatred against South Korea. But the latter does not and only talks about progress,” he said.
Read: Not Andhraite or Telanganaite, I’m Hyderabadi: Nara Lokesh
Emphasising on the fact that the pace of development was slowing down in an already built city like Hyde-rabad, he said, “Our leader (Mr Chandrababu Naidu) spent his life building the city that it is today. It took us 18 months to build the Hitec City and now it is coming to a halt. I have every right to be critical. Let’s take for example Heritage Company that had a plan for a solar plant in Mulugu on the Siddipet road. The last investment of Rs 18-20 crore went in vain as they changed the policy, which made the plant completely unviable. The policy could not enable it and now they (TRS) are crying for power. The state has to be investor-friendly. Otherwise, who will invest? Why would they invest? In Andhra, now IT is not the driver, the ports in fact are acting as a catalyst.”
Stating that Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao never even showed up when called for a debate, he said, “When our leader called him for a debate, he never showed up. This means that he has no guts, he has no knowledge about things and moreover, he does not even want to show up. I was critical about (Y.S.) Jagan Mohan Reddy and I will be critical about KCR.”
Calling the strong sentiment for separate statehood among people in the region as their main reason behind TD's poor show in Telangana, he said that TRS' victory weighed only on the emotional chord.
Read: TRS can’t manage anything: Lokesh
"It's just because of the sentiment that the TRS got Telangana. The sentiment overpowered all the other factors and now we are paying a huge price for this. Emotions and sentiments will play a key role and they will play a major factor. In AP, post bifurcation, the feeling was that we lost everything and we need a leader and they elected us. Whereas in Telangana, it was about the guy who fought for separate statehood. However, the TRS has no experience in governance. That is the difference between them and us. We have experience in governance."
Though many senior leaders are moving to the TRS, Mr Lokesh, however, said that he even doubted if the TRS would be a competitor in the 2019 elections.
"People are going to give them a strong lesson. There are new crises emerging everywhere. There are already 290 farmer suicides. With this pace, it will have the highest suicides. They are not able to manage anything. Whereas we have a long-term plan with power and many other factors. Why will people vote them back? Our leader has put so much thought and effort into everything. He, for the first time, slept at 7:30 pm the other day. There is no focus for the TRS.
"KCR has not stepped out of Hyderabad and if he goes to these villages, the farmers will drive him out. Whereas Mr Naidu was working fulltime for the cyclone, he faced angry people and addressed their issues."
On KCR's comment that Mr Lokesh was too young to respond, the TD leader lashed out saying, "More than 40 per cent voters are young and if he doesn't care about us, he will pay. Our leader cares about us and we are happy."
