Stopping Growth Of Regional Parties Not Good For cooperative federalism: K Kavitha

Senior TRS leader K Kavitha, daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, on Sunday, December 2 decried alleged attempts by national parties to stop the growth of regional parties, warning this is not good for cooperative federalism.

Kavitha, a Lok Sabha MP from Nizamabad, also rejected criticism that Rao is "unreachable", alleging it is a myth and a "propaganda by the Opposition to hoodwink people for electoral gains.

The chief minister, popularly called KCR, advanced the assembly poll by eight months hoping to retain power with a thumping majority with Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leaders saying it is an attempt to "teach" the Opposition BJP and Congress a lesson for allegedly trying to work against the interest of the state to stop the rise of the regional party.

Voting for the keenly fought elections to the 119-member assembly is scheduled to be held on December 7. The ruling TRS won 63 seats in 2014 riding on the wave of the Telangana movement.  

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Kavitha said the party is confident of winning 100 seats and will form the government without the support of other parties, adding it is not a political rhetoric.

"Whenever regional parties are coming up forcefully, national parties try to stop them. We have not just won elections, but made inroads into villages. That's why national parties are here, trying their best," Kavitha said in an exclusive interview to the PTI. 

Stopping the growth of regional parties is not good for cooperative federalism, she warned.

Asked what forced the TRS to advance the polls, Kavitha said, "The primary reason was that the Opposition was trying to stop our progress by putting hurdles in our key projects. Unfortunately, national parties started working against the interest of Telangana. We wanted to teach them a lesson."

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Defending her father's style of functioning, Kavitha said, "Every chief minister has his style of working. One CM may meet public on a daily basis and the other wants a centralised power. You cannot dictate how a CM's style should be. When he should wake up and sleep.  If his policies are good and people are getting more than what they want then the CM's job is done.

"My chief minister is inaccessible is a myth and propaganda of the Opposition, which is trying to project him differently. But people are laughing at them. How we would have implemented welfare schemes without listening to people's problems?"

The Telangana government tops in the country for its spending on welfare schemes. About Rs 40,000 crore has been set aside for the welfare scheme out of the total state budget of Rs 1.74 lakh crore in this fiscal, she claimed. 

Kavitha, who is fiercely campaigning to retain the party's strong cadre base in her constituency, said this was not for the first time that her father had taken sudden decisions like advancing the polls and that he had done like this in the past during the Telangana movement.

The TRS chief broke away from the UPA alliance when the promise of a separate state was not fulfilled. "He resigned within 24 hours and went to the people. That is his style and that is how he got Telangana," she added.

The KCR's style of "going back to the people and proving a point is not new" and that's how he works, she said. She further said the Opposition started the propaganda that the TRS chief was inaccessible and his party is corrupt and so on. 

"This nonsense and noise were too much. In fact, Congress filed cases to stop the mega Kaleshwaram irrigation project. The polls were advanced to put an end to this," she explained.

Ruling out the possibility of a humiliating defeat at the hands of Congress-led Maha Kutami that included the Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP, Kavitha said, "There is no risk of losing. People have benefited from our schemes. We are only seeking their mandate to come back to power again. If people think we don't deserve, let it be that way."

The election battle has intensified in the TRS bastion of Nizamabad as political heavyweights including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi have campaigned here in a bid to hit the base support of the