Telangana CM Responds to Kerala Counterparts' Criticism of Election Campaign

Responding to Keralam Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s scathing remarks on Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s election campaign in support of the United Democratic Front (UDF) last week, the latter stated that he would be visiting Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday, April 7, for a positive and fact-based discussion on the former’s developmental claims on Keralam under the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government. In a letter addressed to Pinarayi Vijayan, Revanth Reddy tried to make a point-by-point rebuttal of the former’s claims, which he had made in a series of posts on his X handle on April 3. The Telangana CM began his letter on Monday, April 6, stating that he has read Vijayan’s tweets with great interest and respect, but felt that they contained several misstatements, selective citations and glaring omissions. Reddy observed that virtually every statistic cited by Pinarayi was from NITI Aayog Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index 2023-24, from a period representing “the tail-end of a disastrous decade for Telangana, when the combined onslaught of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) at the Centre and the BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) in the state had pushed our people to an all-time low. That era ended in December 2023. You are measuring our recovery by data that predates our government.” On Vijayan’s prediction of Keralam going to “become the first state in the country to completely eradicate extreme poverty” by late 2025, Reddy sought to know whether he was speaking of the past or in future tense, as it is presently April 2026. “Did it happen? Or was it, like many LDF promises, still a work in progress?” Revanth Reddy asked. On Vijayan’s claim that Keralam ranked first with 79 points in NITI Aayog’s SDG Index 2023-24, the Telangana CM stated that it was the result of decades of work, including the work done by former Congress chief minister Karunakaran’s focus on infrastructure and Oomen Chandy’s welfare-development balance. Revanth Reddy made a similar case with regard to Vijayan’s claim of Keralam’s poverty rate of 0.55 per cent and Telangana’s being 5.88 per cent, by crediting the progressive governance of both the Congress and the Left governments there, along with substantial Gulf remittances. “Telangana is a 12-year-old state. We inherited the poverty that BRS and BJP created together. The question is not where you are after 60 years, but how fast we are closing the gap in 28 months,” Revanth Reddy noted. He also referred to the Kerala gold smuggling case and the alleged misappropriation of 4.5 kg gold from Sabarimala Ayyappa Swamy temple. He questioned why the BJP government at the Centre, which was troubling the Gandhi family in the National Herald case, was silent when it came to the allegations on the Kerala CPM office with regard to the gold theft cases. Revanth Reddy ended his letter with the famous dialogue from a Malayalam film titled “Narasimham,” where popular actor Mohanlal says, “ Nee Po Mone Dinesha ,” which translates into English as “You go my son,” replacing Dinesha with Vijayan.