BRS MLA KT Rama Rao, in an interview with LiveMint, launched a scathing attack on Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy over the state’s released caste census, dismissing the Congress leaders’ “newfound zeal” for social justice as hollow posturing.
Slamming the survey as “inaccurate, incomplete, and politically motivated”, KTR accused the Congress government in Telangana of using the Backward Class (BC) cause as an electoral ploy while failing to address core issues like BC subcategorisation and legal safeguards for reservations.
With the SEEEPC caste census data now public, what new welfare or affirmative action policies is BRS considering to address the revealed disparities?
The SEEEPC data is unscientific, inaccurate, and incomplete. The complete survey was not tabled in the Assembly, and when we brought it up, it was diverted to some cheap comments, the real discussion never happened. The detailed survey is not available on the government portal. They spent more than Rs150 crore and 50 days and there are wide gaps, many unanswered questions.
The government itself agreed that it managed to collect 96 per cent data. Even if we go by their numbers, at least 16 lakh people were excluded.
The 42 per cent BC numbers that Revanth Reddy now speaks about are inadequate to say the least.
There is no concrete answer on BC subcategorisation. What is BC reservation when there is no subcategorisation? How will you determine the actual reservation percentage to each caste? What is the percentage of reservation from this 42 per cent to Mudirajus or Munnurukapus or Gouds or the many other castes? Without a clear BC subcategorisation, tomorrow you will create an animosity between various BC castes. Hence, I say this government flounders in a quagmire of incompetence.
After BRS came to power, on August 19, 2014, the entire Telangana stayed home to voluntarily participate in the Samagra Kutumbha Survey. We finished the entire data collection process in one single day. All the policy decisions were based on the data from this survey.
Let me say this clearly, for the Congress, this is nothing but a pure political requirement for their electoral existence. Rahul Gandhi’s sanctimonious posturing as a champion of social justice, while his party’s actions betray the BCs through a census riddled with errors, speaks volumes of their intent.
For a leader who remained silent on a national caste census during Congress’s decades in power, his newfound zeal rings hollow.
Would BRS push for the immediate implementation of 42% BC reservations in local body elections, and what steps will you take to ensure this is not just a political promise?
Despite exploiting the “Kamareddy BC Declaration” for electoral mileage, the Congress government has utterly failed the very community it solemnly pledged to uplift. Nearly two years have elapsed, yet not a single commitment to the Backward Classes has been fulfilled.
Last week, in a cabinet meeting, they hastily announced that there will be a 42 per cent BC reservation. Anyone with basic legal knowledge can see through their lies.
There is not a single discussion so far held by the Congress government to have a solid plan in place so that this 42 per cent BC reservation does not get caught in a legal quagmire. What are they doing about the 1992 Indra Sawhney Supreme Court judgement? This hastily scripted ordinance, pushed through under the cloak of urgency, is nothing but another deception.
If Rahul Gandhi genuinely stands for social justice, let him ensure his party honours its own blueprint. If Chief Minister Revanth Reddy is sincere, let him lead an indefinite protest in Delhi to secure constitutional sanction. If the Congress continues to renege on its BC Declaration, it will face a fierce democratic reckoning when the local body elections arrive.
The BRS does not operate in the realm of tokenism. We will ensure that the Congress delivers the promised 42 per cent reservation.
In your view, has the Congress government introduced any truly transformative policies, or are most initiatives a continuation or rebranding of BRS-era programmes?
This regime suffers from a chronic deficit of originality. Over the past 20 months, what the people are witnessing is not innovation, but a shallow imitation. Most initiatives paraded as “new” are nothing more than diluted rebrands of programmes conceived, funded, and executed during BRS’s decade of governance.
Congress ministers are busy cutting ribbons on our legacy – such as flyovers built under SRDP and shamelessly claiming credit for what they did not create.
More troubling is the systematic erasure of Telangana’s cultural identity. The proposal to remove Kakatiya Kala Thoranam and Charminar from the state emblem, and the audacious replacement of Telangana Thalli with a Congress Thalli, is a calculated attempt to distort our history.
How do you address the critique that BRS prioritised flagship schemes like Rythu Bandhu at the expense of long-term investments in education, healthcare, and infrastructure?
Let me address this critique head-on. The notion that BRS prioritised Rythu Bandhu at the expense of long-term investments is not only factually incorrect, it is intellectually dishonest.
We infused ₹73,000 crore directly into farmers’ accounts across 11 crop seasons without bureaucratic hurdles, without discrimination. To suggest that this came at the cost of education, healthcare, or infrastructure is to ignore the transformative footprint BRS left across sectors during our tenure. In education, we expanded residential schools, launched Mana Ooru–Mana Badi, revamped thousands of government schools, and established new Intermediate and Degree colleges.
In healthcare, Telangana became the only state in India with a government medical college in every district. We built Basthi Dawakhanas for urban primary care, upgraded district hospitals, and introduced KCR Kits to reduce maternal and infant mortality.
In Hyderabad, we initiated the construction of three TIMS super-speciality hospitals in strategic directions of the city, designed to decentralise advanced medical care for the urban poor. In Warangal, we envisioned and executed the state’s largest government hospital: a super-speciality institution equipped with modular operation theatres and infection-controlled infrastructure, a corporate-level facility in public hands.
On the infrastructure front, from Mission Bhagiratha to Kaleshwaram Project, from rural roads to urban flyovers, Telangana witnessed an infrastructure renaissance unmatched by any newly formed state. This transformative wave also encompassed the construction of collectorate complexes, the iconic new State Secretariat Building and globally acclaimed innovation hubs like T-Hub and T-Works, each a testament to Telangana’s commitment to administrative excellence and entrepreneurial ambition.
Rythu Bandhu was one pillar of a multi-sectoral development strategy that resulted in increased cultivated area and a rise in paddy production to 3 crore tonnes.
Under KCR garu’s leadership, Telangana witnessed the highest per capita income in the country and a 238 per cent surge in Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) since 2014, with the state contributing 5 per cent to the national GDP. We didn’t just support farmers, we built world-class irrigation infrastructure, expanded IT exports from ₹56,000 crore to ₹2.41 lakh crore, and positioned Hyderabad as a global tech hub. We ensured universal access to potable water across rural Telangana, an achievement unparalleled in scale and execution.
How do you plan to ensure that marginalised communities benefit from both political representation and economic opportunities in the coming years?
For far too long, decades of successive central and state administrations, helmed by the Congress and the BJP, respectively, have reduced marginalised communities to mere electoral commodities. Their vote bank politics left most of the population in cycles of poverty, even after seven and a half decades after our nation’s independence.
It was the BRS government, under the visionary leadership of KCR garu, that dared to break this cycle of systemic neglect with the path-breaking Dalit Bandhu scheme. This pioneering initiative provided a substantial financial grant of ₹10 lakh directly to Scheduled Caste families, specifically designed to empower an entire generation and propel them towards enduring economic independence, thereby fostering a cascading positive impact on subsequent generations.
In stark contrast, the current Congress government, after 20 months at the helm, has not only failed to deliver on its grandiloquent promise of ₹12 lakh under its rechristened scheme for the same communities, not a single beneficiary has received the pledged amount, but has also perversely obstructed the ongoing implementation of Dalit Bandhu.
Let me reiterate: our politics is not about symbolism, it is about systemic change. And marginalised communities will remain at the heart of our vision for Telangana’s next chapter.
We will ensure representation across all tiers, from gram panchayats to urban local bodies, guaranteeing that Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and minorities have a decisive voice. At the same time, we will take measures for systematic economic upliftment, ensuring that caste-based occupational clusters are not left behind in the digital economy. Our focus will be on entrepreneurship incubation, access to capital, and market linkages… especially for youth and women from these marginalised sections.
Is the BRS still pursuing a national role, or has the recent electoral experience prompted a renewed focus on Telangana’s grassroots politics?
Let there be no ambiguity, Telangana is not merely our political commitment, it is our emotional inheritance. It’s our cultural spine and our existential anchor. The BRS remains unequivocally tethered to the aspirations of the people and the destiny of our state.
We are vigorously rebuilding our organisational apparatus and mobilising cadre across constituencies to expose the Congress regime’s hollow promises and chronic ineptitude. We are spearheading issue-based campaigns rooted in lived realities. The BRS will never allow the soul of Telangana to be bartered for fleeting optics or Delhi-scripted narratives.
How do you plan to retain and energise your core base in Telangana amid growing competition from both Congress and BJP?
The Congress, with all its fake promises and white lies, came to power in Telangana. Today, the government here is neither autonomous nor dedicated. They are abusing the state to fulfil their national ambition of making Rahul Gandhi the Prime Minister.
Rahul Gandhi speaks aggressively about bulldozer-raaj in BJP states but is silent about the bulldozer destruction in Telangana by Hydra. The entire world took a stance on University of Hyderabad’s midnight green murder. Rahul Gandhi never uttered a word.
The people of Telangana have not forgotten the 420 promises, fake guarantees and hollow declarations made during the Assembly and Parliament campaigns. Nor have they forgiven the parade of Congress heavyweights who descended upon Telangana for photo ops and vanished the moment ballots were cast. Their absence is not just physical, it is moral.
It is shameful that the Congress regime in Telangana has turned governance into a marketplace of commissions and kickbacks. For the first time in history, contractors staged a dharna in the secretariat, saying they cannot pay 20 per cent commission for bill clearances. Such shame!
While the Prime Minister and Home Minister repeatedly visit Telangana and thunder that the state has become an “ATM for Congress”, alleging the collection of an RR tax, one must ask the obvious: If the central government is indeed aware of rampant corruption, why hasn’t it ordered a probe through national investigative agencies?
The truth is glaring – Revanth Reddy and the BJP are hand in glove. They lack the strength to take on the BRS independently and have resorted to an unholy backroom alliance to silence the only credible and courageous voice of Telangana, the BRS.
As BRS marks its 25th anniversary, what concrete steps are you taking to reinvent the party’s relevance and connect with today’s electorate, especially after the transition from ruling party to Opposition?
Two and a half decades ago, the BRS was born not in the pursuit of political power, but as a resolute people’s movement. The people of Telangana will always be the heart and soul of this party. We are and we will be wholly dedicated to uphold the wishes of the people, their intrinsic rights and to demand the cherished pride of our land.
We were never mere political convenience. Whether steering the state from the helm of governance or now, in our role as a vigilant opposition, our unwavering commitment to the aspirations of four crore Telangana citizens remains absolute and eternal.
So, it is not a transition but a mere transfer of power, which is nothing but the crux of any democracy. We were born out of people’s needs, we were given a chance to shape the future of the state, not once but twice. And today we sit in the opposition, fighting for rights and identity of people of Telangana.
The core will remain, how we will do it has slightly changed.
Looking back, what internal assessments have you conducted to understand the 2023 Assembly defeat, and what specific grassroots feedback is guiding your current strategy?
After two successful terms, what happened during the 2023 Assembly elections is not an earth-shattering defeat. Yes, we lost…but by a mere 1.9 per cent margin. Call it administrative fatigue or maybe mild anti-incumbency…but not an outright rejection of BRS.
One very pertinent aspect we realised during the internal surveys was we somehow failed to communicate our work efficiently. Over the last few years, elections are not being fought on real development, they are driven by political narratives peddled on WhatsApp. When these narratives are pushed repeatedly, even the most unrealistic piece of information becomes gospel.
Let me give you a small but very significant example. There was a story that was pushed on social media platforms that KCR garu’s official residence Pragathi Bhavan had bulletproof bathrooms. We laughed it off, did not even think of countering it. But this story developed a life of its own. Today, Deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka lives in the same residence. I dare them to ask if Bhatti’s official residence has bulletproof washrooms now. Another lore is about KCR garu’s thousands of acres sprawling “farmhouse”! They went on to call him a “farmhouse CM”.
KCR garu who is a farmer at heart loves to continue his farming activities, he in his ten years of tenure never put the state’s development and progress on the backburner.
Today, CM Revanth Reddy, who drilled these fake narratives, lives in a palatial house in Jubilee Hills.
He does all his meetings at his house. Can we call him the “Palace CM”?
KCR garu’s image was tarnished time and again in social media. We were too busy in administration that we never bothered about what was getting circulated in social media. When we brought it up with KCR garu, he simply asked us to focus on work, he believed everything was noise.
Yes, there were minor administrative gaps. But mostly it was fake news that projected us as anti-people. We are working on all the feedback that we are getting now. Today, in less than two years since we lost power, there is an undeniable support for KCR garu and BRS. People openly talk about how Congress cheated them with fake promises of two-wheelers, one tula gold and what not.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
