Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Telangana chief Kishan Reddy on Saturday, October 15, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi cared about the plight of fisherfolk unlike the state’s Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR). Reddy was addressing the fisherfolk community in Musheerabad ahead of the Telangana Assembly elections to be held on November 30.
“PM Modi was the first to prioritise fisheries as a separate industry. He encouraged the industry and has often remarked that fisheries should be treated on par with agriculture. Even when he was the Gujarat Chief minister, Modi would ensure that fishermen were taken care of incase of cyclones and promoted the industry,” said Reddy.
Reddy also claimed that PM Modi was the first Prime Minister of Independent India who hailed from the BC (Backward Classes) community. However, before Modi, Deve Gowda who belongs to a BC community, served as the PM of the country.
“Modi also ensured that a Scheduled Caste (SC) person like Ramnath Kovind and a Scheduled Tribe (ST) leader like Droupadi Murmu were made the Presidents of India,” he added. Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda hails from an OBC community, but the BJP has always hailed Modi as the first PM from the BC community. The opposition had protested against a similar statement in Parliament in September 2023.
The state BJP chief argued that unlike KCR, who only cared about promoting his family, PM Modi cared for the welfare of the country. “All CM KCR cares about is ensuring his son (referring to BRS working president KTR) becomes the next Chief Minister and his daughter (referring to MLC K Kavitha) becomes a Union minister,” he said.
In the upcoming Telangana polls, scheduled to be held on November 30, the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s (BRS) primary challenger is the Congress. The BJP, which has been positioning itself as the main opposition party however has seemingly lost steam. In the run up to the polls, all of the defections by political leaders was only between the BRS and Congress, with the BJP still a second option. It is to be seen how the BJP performs, given that in the 2018 elections it won only one Assembly seat with a seven per cent vote share. However, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it managed to win four Lok Sabha segments with a 20% vote share on its own.
At Sunday’s meeting Reddy argued that the money given by the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) would ‘run out in a week’s time’ but what was important to preserve was Telangana’s ‘self respect’. “The BRS has done nothing for the Telangana martyrs. All CM KCR has done in his time in power is enslave the residents of the state,” Reddy alleged.
“We need to remember that in Telangana, we have a history of fighting against the Razakars. All the CM does is use money and the police instead of working for the welfare of people,” he concluded, by invoking the annexation of the erstwhile Hyderabad state by the Indian army in 1948. The Razakar militia was run by former Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Qasim Razvi around India’s independence, with the intention to keep the Hyderabad state independent.