KCR stays away during PM's Telangana visit, cites fever

Naveen S Garewal 
Hyderabad, February 5 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s half-day visit to Hyderabad has started a new political equation between Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) and the prime minister as the latter chose to remain conspicuously absent while the prime minister was in the state.  

Sources in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) said the chief minister was unwell and running a fever. The Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Dairy Development and Cinematography Minister T. Srinivas Yadav was deputed yesterday to receive the prime minister at the airport. Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and Union Ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and G. Kishan Reddy, besides others, accompanied the prime minister during his six-hour Hyderabad visit. 

It may be mentioned that during a visit to Punjab last month, Chief Minister Charanjit Channi, too, had stayed away from receiving the prime minister at Bathinda. Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal had welcomed the prime minister at Bathinda Air Force station just like Telangana Animal Husbandry Minister did at Hyderabad on Saturday. 

Soon on his arrival, the prime minister visited the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Patancheru in Hyderabad and kickstarted the Golden Jubilee Anniversary of the institution. The prime minister stayed at the ICRICSAT, where he inaugurated the Climate Change Research Facility on Plant Protection and Rapid Generation Advancement Facility. He also launched a commemorative stamp issued on the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the ICRISAT in Hyderabad. 

Later in the day, he performed Rudra Abhishek, ahead of inaugurating a 216-feet tall “Statue of Equality” in memory of eleventh-century Bhakti Saint Sri Ramanujacharya.  

Speaking at ICRISAT, the prime minister appreciated the contribution of the institution in water and soil management, improvement in crop variety, on-farm diversity and livestock integration. The Prime Minister reiterated India’s request to the world to pay special attention to climate change. He also referred to digital agriculture, which he termed as India’s future and stressed that talented Indian youth could contribute a great deal.  

The absence of the chief minister on account of “running fever” has not gone down well with the BJP leadership in the state. The Telangana BJP official Twitter handle posted, “KCR has been regularly insulting our PM @narendramodi Ji. Now violating protocol stoops is such idiot and shameful act of KCR. We will never tolerate this to our PM”. 

There has been tension between the BJP and the ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samithi (TRS), ever since the BJP state president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay was arrested by the state police in January, following which national BJP leaders, including JP Nadda, have come to Hyderabad and protested the alleged “high-handedness” of the state police against BJP leaders reportedly at the behest of the chief minister. 

Chief Minister KCR lost his cool on the budget day when he called the prime minister names and mocked his style of wearing local clothes wherever he went. He made no bones about the desire to float a non-BJP, non-Congress political front soon. In the recent past, the relationship between the Telangana chief minister and the BJP leadership at the centre has been at a new low, so the absence of the chief minister from an event to be presided over by the prime minister is being viewed with political overtones.