Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy outrightly refuted Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s charges on his ruling and questioned the latter’s claims on governance, poverty eradication and transparency in his State. Further, Mr. Reddy, speaking to a news agency during his campaign in Kerala, alleged that Mr. Vijayan was being ‘protected’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Sabarimala gold theft case. Claiming that Mr. Modi was acting as Mr. Vijayan’s godfather in New Delhi, Mr. Reddy questioned why no action had been taken against the Kerala Chief Minister.
In his reply to the letter by Mr. Vijayan on Tuesday (April 7), Mr. Reddy has objected to Mr. Vijayan’s reliance on the NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index 2023-24 to assess Telangana’s performance claiming that the report had reflected the ‘tail-end’ of nearly a decade of ‘BRS-BJP misrule’, which ended in December 2023.
Stating that his government has completed 28 months in office and should be judged on its own record, Mr. Revanth Reddy claimed Telangana’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) stood at ₹16.12 lakh crore in 2024-25, registering a growth rate of 10.7%, higher than the national average of 9.9%.
“Our (Telangana) per capita income had reached ₹3.87 lakh, making it the highest among major States, ahead of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Kerala, as per the RBI’s Handbook of Statistics 2024-25,” he said.
