Telangana’s Information Technology and Industry Ministry K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday termed as “factually incorrect” the statement on Information Technology and Investment Region (ITIR), Hyderabad, given by Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre in the Lok Sabha.
Dhotre was responding to a question by BJP member Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Wednesday.
KTR, as the Telangana minister is known, claimed that in spite of submitting all necessary information, the Detailed Project Report (DPR) and also several reminders in the last six years, the Union Minister chose to mislead the house.
The Union Minister said: “The Government of Telangana was asked to submit the required information to the concerned ministries with intimation to MeitY. No information was furnished by the Government of Telangana.”
KTR said that it was very unfair on the part of the NDA government and the Telangana BJP leaders to blame the Telangana government despite repeated requests by the state government to the Centre.
He recalled that first such letter was written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao as soon as the state of Telangana was formed in June 2014.
KTR submitted another detailed memorandum on ITIR to the Centre in September 2014.
He said in 2016 he met the then Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya to present the DPR in response to the latter’s comments that the Telangana government did not submit a project report for ITIR.
“Though the Telangana government presented a project report on ITIR twice, Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya commented that we did not submit the DPR. Probably he might have been misguided by officials. To put things straight and make facts clear, I have personally met him, informed him, and also presented the DPR of ITIR once again,” KTR had told media after meeting Dattatreya.
Several reminders about ITIR Project were submitted to Prime Minister Modi and Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over the last six years. “Yet the NDA government chose to ignore these requests. The intention to discontinue the ITIR Project was very clearly understood by the noncommittal responses of NDA government.”
Last month, KTR wrote a letter to Prasad requesting funds for the ITIR project. Yet, the union government did not allocate a single rupee in the current year’s budget, he said.
“While the facts are thus, it is unfortunate that Union Minister Sanjay Dhotre chose to issue a factually incorrect statement. It is also irresponsible on the part of state BJP leaders to resort to a smear campaign on the Telangana State Government without ascertaining the facts,” he added.
