Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has reaffirmed support for special category status to Andhra Pradesh
Vikarabad: Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) on Monday reaffirmed support for special category status to Andhra Pradesh.
At a rally, KCR also claimed that his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu was "abusing" him every day and will lose the forthcoming elections.
KCR said, "Our MPs have spoken in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha in support of giving special category status to Andhra Pradesh. Even now we have the same stand. After winning seats in the elections, our MPs will offer support in bringing special category status to Andhra Pradesh."
The demand to bring Andhra Pradesh under the special category gained momentum after the region split into two states.
Speaking to MyNation, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) treasurer, Prem Kumar Jain said, "Before these kinds of remarks, Chandrashekar Rao has given several complicated statements on the people of Andhra Pradesh. Now, he feels that he will lose the MP elections. That is the reason he is claiming to be in favour of Andhra Pradesh's special category status. Otherwise, KCR is totally against providing SCS to the state. TDP will win more than 150 seats in the upcoming Assembly elections. The public knows what we are doing for the state. There is no second thought at all in this."
Telangana, which is India's youngest state, was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014. Andhra's capital Hyderabad, also a rising IT hub with the majority of jobs, was also shifted to Telangana.
At present, as many as 11 states – Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Mizoram have been granted financial aid under the special category as a majority of these regions have hilly-terrain and have a considerable tribal population.
The responsibility of allocating the funds to special and general category states, which are based on Madhav Gadgil-Pranab Mukherjee (1969) formula, is on the shoulders of the Central government.
In a recent rally, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Naidu had thrown an open challenge at the opposition chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy to convince KCR to include the grant of a special category status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh in the federal front manifesto.
The states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will go to polls in two days, April 11.
In Telangana, except in 13 Assembly segments and in Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency, the election campaigning will come to an end by 5 PM on Tuesday evening.
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