Hyderabad, June 07: BJP national president Nitin Gadkari on Sunday asserted that the party was 100 per cent in favour of a separate State of Telangana and held the Congress squarely responsible for the political crisis gripping the State.
On his first visit to the State since assuming the mantle of the BJP, Gadkari touched upon almost all the issues confronting the Rosaiah government in the State in particular and the UPA-II at the Centre in general: Telangana, price rise, irrigation, agriculture and river-water sharing.
“What is happening here is not good. Vote-bank politics of the Congress is complicating the Telangana issue,” he observed and challenged the ruling party to deliver the goods if it was sincere. “The BJP will support the UPA Government if it introduces a Bill in favour of a Telangana State in Parliament,” Gadkari said, adding that the party’s stand was the same in respect of Vidarbha too.
Taking on the Rosaiah government, he suggested that it learn a lesson or two from Narendra Modi’s government in Gujarat. “Agricultural growth rate in Gujarat is 14 per cent whereas it is just four per cent in Andhra Pradesh,” he pointed out and attributed the plight of farmers, the jobless and the aam aadmi to the economic policies of the UPA-II government. Pointing at the irrigation potential of Andhra Pradesh, he promised: “If the BJP is voted to power, the irrigation potential in the State will be increased five-fold. We will immediately take up interlinking of all major south Indian rivers like Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, Cauvery and Pennar.”
He regretted that the UPA government had shelved the river linking project proposed by the Vajpayee government. “The issue of river water has remained unsolved. Hardly any attention is paid to the creation of a South Indian River Grid,” he remarked.
On price rise, the BJP chief had a word of advice for the Centre. “The UPA government has failed in curbing price rise. Future trading and forward trading in commodity exchange is helping manipulators and corporate giants. The government should suspend future trading in commodities,” he said.
——–Agencies