Telangana Thalli triggers political spar

Hyderabad: Refusing the allegations that the government was changing the Telangana Thalli statue, several Ministers on Monday said that there was no Telangana Thalli statue officially in the state so far and this was the first official statue by the government.

While the BJP questioned the frequent changing of the symbols and appearance of the statue during the discussion on the statement given by the Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy in the Assembly on Monday, Minister Ponnam Prabhakar said that the opposition members cannot say that the government had changed the appearance of the statue. “The existing Telangana statue was related to a political party. There was no official Telangana Thalli hence the government brought in the Statue, which should be an inspiration for the Telangana society,” said Ponnam Prabhakar.

The Minister also said that if there was no Sonia Gandhi there was no Telangana state. He said that they had invited Leader of Opposition K Chandrashekar Rao and also Union Ministers G Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay to the unveiling programme.

Minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy said that the BRS had no right to question the government’s decision. He said that the main opposition party has removed Telangana from its name and converted TRS into BRS. “Your relation with Telangana broke after you removed the word ‘Telangana’ from your party name. We have Telangana in our party name… we are called Telangana PCC,” said Venkat Reddy. He also wanted the BRS chief to teach his children to behave in the House, alleging that the main opposition MLAs were creating noise outside the House wearing t-shirts.