Telangana BJP president and Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy said Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy has become the latest “blue eyed boy” of the Congress Party’s high command even replacing Karnataka deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and has been campaigning in other states like Kerala and Karnataka for the Lok Sabha polls.
“He [CM] is in charge of marshalling “all kinds” of resources for the party. Everyone is Telangana is aware of the ‘RG tax’ being collected industrialists, real estate businessmen and others,” he charged.
In an exclusive chat, Mr. Reddy also accused former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao of making ‘baseless allegations’ against the saffron party as he was unable to tackle the current political scenario where the BRS party’s support base has been eroding.
He questioned how the BJP with just one MLA could have “destabilised” the KCR Government which had enjoyed a majority in the Legislative Assembly in the last term. “How can an ex-Chief Minister make such allegations? When did we destabilise his government? We had only Goshamahal MLA T. Raja Singh in the Assembly,” he pointed out.
The BJP leader also said phone tapping is a very sensitive and explosive issue and the Centre was considering if it can conduct a parallel investigation considering that the State Government agencies are already on the job. “Even my phone was tapped. I was in charge of Jammu & Kashmir where phone surveillance is done by the security agencies to check anti-national activity but it certainly cannot be used for political activity,” he maintained.
The issue also is that the state Home Secretary is empowered to sanction phone surveillance unlike before when the Union Home Secretary’s permission was required. “There should be clear-cut reasons given to tap phones of an individual, file a report on what information was gathered and the import of it. Nothing of that sort seems to have been done under BRS Government when it snooped on citizens,” he said.
