Revanth: We don’t do phone-tapping

Hyderabad/ New Delhi: Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy held a meeting with the Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and AICC General Secretary KC Venugopal in Delhi and briefed the two leaders about the Congress party’s winning streak in the local body elections including the recently held Gram Panchayat and Municipal polls. The issue of filling two Rajya Sabha MP seats, which will fall vacant in April this year, also came up for discussion.

BRS MP KR Suresh Reddy and Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi will complete their terms.

In an informal interaction with the media later, the Chief Minister made it clear that the government would file a charge sheet in the phone-tapping case and submit it to the court. It took 20 months to arrest former SIB chief Prabhakar Rao in phone-tapping and it was the reason for the delay in the investigation.

To a query, the Chief Minister said that he will not do phone-tapping of his cabinet colleagues or others like KCR.

He further said that the government was also ready to hand over the PPA (power purchasing agreements) case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He again questioned Union Minister of Coal G Kishan Reddy for not ordering a CBI probe into the Kaleshwaram case. The state government has not received any communication from the CBI till the date, he added.

Revanth Reddy predicted that the one nation–one election would be held in 2029 and the delimitation of Assembly constituencies would be done in 2027. The Chief Minister claimed that he would continue as Chief Minister for 10 years.

Referring to the Singareni tenders issue, Revanth Reddy said that the Center made changes in the tendering process in 2018 and he would make a statement in the Assembly on the issue.

He alleged that the Coal India under the union ministry was also debt-trapped and the Singareni was facing debt burden as well.

The Chief Minister also shared his views on pending irrigation projects. All the pending projects in the erstwhile united AP were to be completed after the bifurcation. He wondered why the Andhra Pradesh government was filing cases to block them. According to him, River Godavari water sharing can be solved through a dialogue.

Pointing out that the National Dam Safety officials had given a report on Medigadda barrage, the Chief Minister said that the opposition BRS is ready to blame the government if the damaged Medigadda barrage is filled with water and causes more damage in the future.