Hyderabad: K Kavitha has closed one door and opened another. In an interview, the daughter of former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao ruled out any return to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi and announced she would build her own political house — the Telangana Rashtra Sena, or TRS.
'I don't ever want to work with BRS ever again,' she said, accusing the party's leadership of ignoring corruption allegations and of failing to stand by its workers. She said her new outfit would take forward what she called the unfinished agenda of the Telangana statehood movement.
Much of her fire was aimed at the ruling Congress. Kavitha alleged that the government of chief minister A Revanth Reddy was using the state's resources to fund the party's activities elsewhere in the country, calling Telangana an 'ATM' for the Congress.
She began her campaign in Revanth Reddy's own constituency, and argued the move had unsettled the established parties. 'I believe it is time that Telangana has a woman Chief Minister,' she said, claiming that the BRS, the BJP and the Congress were all worried about a new challenger.
On the Women's Reservation Bill, Kavitha said the proposed 33 per cent quota should be implemented without being tied to delimitation, warning that linking the two would hurt southern states and delay women's representation. She said the provision should be in place before the next Lok Sabha election.
Healthcare and education, she said, would be her party's priorities, and she promised both free of cost. She questioned the affordability of Hyderabad's public transport and private schooling, arguing that development should be judged by its effect on ordinary people rather than by new infrastructure alone.