Hyderabad: Industries minister D Sridhar Babu has said BRS’ claims about protecting the University of Hyderabad (UOH) land, if they return to power, are nothing but a joke and termed it hypocrisy. He reiterated that the Congress govt has no plans to encroach upon UoH land, not a single inch will be touched.
Despite this, BRS leaders were misleading students, using them as pawns for political gains. Through fabricated images and manipulated videos, they were attempting to provoke unrest on social media. The minister strongly condemned such deceitful tactics and urged BRS to stop misguiding students for political mileage. “BRS is not fighting for UoH land, students, or environmental conservation; their real goal is to disrupt development, stall industries, and create unrest,” he added.
In a statement, the minister said while chief minister A Revanth Reddy was focused on driving industrial development and job creation, KTR was resorting to personal attacks, which was highly inappropriate. “We demand that he withdraw his baseless remarks against the CM,” the minister added.
Reiterating that the Kancha Gachibowli land belongs to the state govt, he said: “If BRS truly cared, why were they silent about these land parcels for 10 years? Instead of protecting public resources, they handed over land in the surrounding areas to benamis. Their sudden activism today is nothing but political theatrics.”
BRS, which talks about conservation, during its rule between 2014 and 2023 oversaw the destruction of 428,437 acres of forest land, he said. “For the Kaleshwaram project, they cleared 7,829 acres of forest land. Between 2016-2019, Telangana ranked among the top three states for deforestation, with 12,12,753 trees axed, as per a written response in Parliament. BRS had uprooted thousands of trees in Warangal for their public meetings and demolished massive govt buildings covering 28 acres and destroyed nearly 1,000 century-old trees to construct a ‘New Secretariat’,” he said, asking “how can the destroyers of Telangana’s environment now claim to be its saviours?”