Shah's claim on central funds blatant lie: Telangana CM

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday dubbed as a "blatant lie" BJP President Amit Shah's comment that the Centre was providing additional funds of Rs 20,000 crore to the state every year.

Rao said he challenged Shah to prove that even Rs 200 crore of additional funds were provided to the state.

He said if the BJP leader could prove so, he was ready to resign as Chief Minister.

"Whatever he said in the past three days is nothing but blatant lies. He should apologise to the people of Telangana," Rao told the media here.

The Chief Minister said the Centre earned Rs 50,013 crore in taxes from Telangana during 2016-17 while it gave only Rs 24,561 crore under all central schemes.

He said Shah should know that it is Telangana which gave Rs 25,452 crore to the Centre.

Rao, President of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), said Shah was trying to spread "misinformation about the newly created state".

The TRS chief said Shah was trying to damage the state's progress for cheap politics. He said it was unbecoming of the head of a ruling party at the Centre to make such comments.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, said had Shah made personal comments against him, he would not have reacted but since he tried to spread misinformation about Telengana, he (Rao) decided to respond.

"Whether the BJP is in power or not at the Centre, the state will get whatever it has to get. Like other states, Telangana also got funds from the Centre but it did not get even one rupee more," he said.

He also took exception to Shah's comments that his government had failed to implement welfare schemes.

The Chief Minister said Telangana is one of the only six-seven states that were contributing to national growth and that Telangana is number one in implementing welfare schemes.

--IANS

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