It’s disrespectful to people of Telangana, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy said on Monday after he was forced to return to India as the Centre denied permission to his proposed trip to the US.
“What is the political angle – Modi is BJP, Revanth Reddy is Congress, Modi is Gujarat, Revanth is Telangana, is this the ‘political angle’ which they mentioned while denying the permission? It is totally against federal Cooperatism. “Let me say that the visits of chief ministers, as indeed those of other dignitaries, are assessed by the Ministry of External Affairs in order to accord political clearance. The programme proposed in such cases should be appropriate to the office held and the purpose of the visit. In this particular case, that was not so with respect to the United States.
Because the programmes scheduled there were not appropriate to the office he held and the stated purpose of the visit, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said earlier, the Central government, though clearing the UK trip, declined political clearance to Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s visit to the US. Therefore, the clearance was denied and not given. Reddy had planned to tour the campuses of Harvard University and MIT in the US on August 24, followed by a visit to the North-Eastern campus and meeting with a team of Virginia Tech University in Boston on August 25. His itinerary had also included a ‘Meet and Greet’ event of Indian Overseas Congress (USA) in New York on August 26 before returning to Hyderabad on August 30.
The Congress Chief Minister also said the decision was against the principles of cooperative federalism, and cited the example of the Prime Minister and other Chief Ministers, including the Gujarat Chief Minister, who have visited the US. Gujarat is conspiring against Telangana, I condemn it,” he said. Reddy said Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge and party leader Rahul Gandhi would raise the issue of denying him permission to visit US in Parliament. Incidentally, let me also tell you that clearance was given for his visit to the United Kingdom,” the Ministry spokesperson had said last week. After the official delegation had already arrived in the UK, the Centre informed the state government that permission for the US visit would not be granted, it said.
