Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday found fault with the Telangana government for not displaying picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the fair price shops where rice is distributed to the people below poverty line free of cost.
Sitharaman, who has been on a two-day visit to Telangana as part of Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana programme of the Bharatiya Janata Party since Thursday, toured Kamareddy district on Friday to inspect various Centrally-funded programmes being implemented in the state.
She stopped at a fair price shop at Birkur village and interacted with the beneficiaries of the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, under which each family would get five kg of rice free of cost.
During the inspection, the Union finance minister noticed that there is neither photograph nor a flex board of the Prime Minister at the shop. She turned her ire at Kamareddy district collector Jitesh Patel and sought to know why there was no flex board of Modi, which she said was mandatory for every ration shop where the rice was being supplied under the Central scheme.
Sitharaman asked the collector to ensure that Modi’s picture should be put up at all the fair shops in the district. “It is the responsibility of all the district collectors to see that the ration shops should invariably have the pictures of the Prime Minister without fail,” she said.
The Union finance minister asked the collector about the share of the central and the state governments in the free ration rice distribution in Telangana. When Patel said he did not have the complete details of the scheme, she said she wanted full details of the scheme within 30 minutes, failing with she would call for a press conference and expose the TRS government.
Sitharaman also pulled up the fair price shop dealer who tried to speak with a beneficiary in an intimidating manner. She asked the collector to take necessary action against the dealer. “How can he speak like that in front of me?” she asked.
As Sitharaman’s visit to the fair price shop was flashed in the television channels and the video going viral in the social media, Telangana finance minister T Harish Rao called for a press conference and condemned her alleged high-handed behaviour.
“It is ridiculous that the Union finance minister insisted on keeping the photograph of Modi in ration shops. It is nothing but degrading the stature of the Prime Minister,” he said.
Rao said many Prime Ministers had ruled the country but never had they insisted that their photographs be displayed at the fair price shops. “The present government is behaving cheaply,” he said.
He said the Centre’s contribution to the free rice scheme in Telangana was only 55 per cent and the remaining 45 per cent is being given by the state government. “We are spending ₹3,610 crore on the rice scheme. So, should we demand putting up of the chief minister’s picture at the ration shops?” the minister asked.
In the morning, mild tension prevailed at Banswada town when scores of National Students Union of India (NSUI) tried to stop Sitharaman’s convoy and raised slogans against the alleged witch-hunt of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED). The police, however, dispersed them.
(With inputs from agencies)