BRS braces for Singareni protest during PM's visit

Hyderabad: Alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was 'peddling lies' to mislead the people of Telangana on the issue of privatisation of Singareni Collieries, the ruling BRS has given a call for statewide protest on Saturday when Modi would be in Hyderabad to inaugurate and lay foundation stones for several projects and attend programmes.

BRS working president K T Rama Rao said the BJP government at the Centre was bent upon privatisation of Singareni coal blocks. He felt that the best way to protest the privatisation was to organise maha dharnas in the coal belt areas like Mancherial, Kothagudem, Ramagundam and Bhoopalapally.

KTR had an interaction with party district presidents and MLAs from the coal belt on Thursday.

The BRS leaders allege that the Centre was trying to wash off its hands by totally privatising Singareni.

He said the Centre had earlier tried to auction coal blocks but it did not get proper response from the private companies. The state government, he said, has been demanding the Centre to provide these blocks to Singareni. But ignoring the plea, it has issued a notification for auction of Sattupally Block 3, Shravanpally, Pengadapa Blocks, KTR said. This was an attempt to hamper the interests of Telangana.

KTR said that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had earlier written a letter to the Union Coal Minister to allocate these blocks to Singareni. But the Centre appears to be on a selling spree.

"Telangana is the land of fighting spirit and we will prevent the conspiracies of Centre," KTR said, adding that the PM has love only for Gujarat. If privatised, the thermal power sector in the country would collapse and it would be pushed into crisis, he added.