Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao will leave for Delhi on Friday on a three-day visit, after the first day’s session of the monsoon session of the Legislative Assembly.
This is Rao's second visit to Delhi this month after the nine-day stay from September 1. His sudden visit has triggered speculation in political circles but the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) clarified that he will be in the Capital to attend a meeting convened by Union home minister Amit Shah with Chief Ministers of states that are affected by left-wing extremism (LWE) on September 26. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are among the ten states identified as LWE-affected.
Rao will meet Union jal shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Saturday to discuss his government’s concerns over the gazette regarding the Godavari and Krishna river management boards. He is to meet Union minister for public distribution Piyush Goyal to take up the issue of FCI refusing to procure boiled rice from Telangana, which is causing huge losses to the state and to farmers.
Meanwhile, Rao’s counterpart from Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is expected to attend Sunday’s meeting. This will be their first meeting after January 2020, when they met at Pragathi Bhavan.
The two had met over six times between May 2019 and January 2020 to resolve pending disputes between the two states. However, they avoided meeting each other due to Krishna water sharing dispute between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Each state has moved the Centre, Supreme Court and NGT against the other on projects related to Krishna.
