TRS can ensure heavy flow of funds for T'gana if it wins 16 LS seats: KT Rama Rao

Hyderabad: Claiming that a coalition government would be formed post the Lok Sabha elections with neither the NDA nor UPA getting a majority on its own, TRS working president K T Rama Rao Thursday said his party can ensure heavy flow of funds for Telangana if it won 16 Lok Sabha seats.

"If five-six regional parties or like-minded parties come together...if we can win 17 seats from Telangana, we (TRS) 16 and our friend Asaduddin Owaisi (AIMIM) will anyway win Hyderabad (Lok Sabha)...a situation of Telangana people deciding who should sit in Delhi's chair will definitely come... Then funds would come like a flood," he said. The total number of Lok Sabha seats in Telangana is 17. Rao, who was addressing a TRS meeting at Warangal, in preparation for the coming Lok Sabha polls, said surveys conducted by national-level media organisations showed that neither NDA nor UPA was in a position to form the government on its own. Citing more such surveys, he claimed the NDA and UPA may not get more than 150 and 100 seats, respectively. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader also alleged that the popularity graph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was waning as seen in BJP's defeat in Rajasthan and other states in the assembly elections in December last year. Saying that the atmosphere in the country was not the same as in 2014, he said the people have understood after five years that Modi "can give good speeches, but cannot do anything that can bring a change in the lives of common people". Modi did not agree to the requests of Telangana to give national status to an irrigation project in the state or funds to schemes though the NITI Aayog made recommendations to the effect. Congress MPs would not be able to do anything substantial either as they need to obtain permission from Delhi for everything, Rao alleged. "If Rahul Gandhi says sit, it is sit, and stand, if he says stand," he said.