Just a day after Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu announced the list of Smart Cities, TRS is deeply upset with the centre choosing only 2 cities from Telangana. TRS MP Vinod Kumar wrote a letter to Modi with heavy dissent over the criteria followed to choose the smart cities, and demanded to revoke the list till the overall distribution criteria is reviewed.
The Karimnagar MP said that since statutory towns are decided by the respective state governments, the Tamil Nadu government announced even a smallest hamlet with 2,000 member population as a statutory town. The MP further argued that Telangana’s urban population is 1,36,08,665 only 2.5 times less than that of Tamil Nadu (3,49,49,729). However, Tamil Nadu is given 12 smart cities while Telangana got only 2, Hyderabad and Warangal.
The TRS-BJP relation strained after Karimnagar was excluded from the Smart Cities list and even when Nizamabad MP Kavitha criticised Modi’s ambitious project Sandad Adarsh Grameen Yojana as ‘useless’. While MP Vinod said that with Telangana losing out on more smart cities, it will make a travesty of Modi’s Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas slogan.