Political Diary

This election is very important because it is a fight between credibility and opportunism.
Five years ago, the Congress came to power making some promises to the people. We fulfilled all of them and also launched new programmes that would benefit the people. At the same time, the Telugu Desam, under the leadership of Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, scrapped all the schemes started by late Mr N.T. Rama Rao while in power and did not care about the promises made during the 1994 election campaign. Time and again Mr Naidu has displayed his apathy towards the promises made by him as well as his party.

The Rs 2 per kg rice scheme, subsidised power and prohibition were all scrapped during Mr Naidu’s nine-year regime. He never cared for either the poor or the farmers. But the Congress which came to power both at Centre and in the state took up the mission to rejuvenate the crisis-ridden agriculture sector. Though the Opposition and even Mr Naidu ridiculed us on free power, we went ahead to give Rs 3,000 crore worth of power to 26 lakh farmers. That changed everything. The rain gods also supported us.

While giving importance to agriculture, we also turned the state into an investment paradise. It has become the number two state in the country with respect to attracting investment. We also launched Arogyasri and Abhaya Hastam, two major schemes that are benefiting nearly eight crore people, though we did not promise this to them while coming to power. Therefore, we did more than we promised. We never minced words on Telangana, but only cautioned that it should be backed by the consensus.