BRS MLA Harish Rao accuses Congress govt of 'neglecting' health sector projects

Senior BRS legislator T Harish Rao on Saturday accused the Congress government in Telangana of ''neglecting'' key health sector initiatives launched during the previous K Chandrasekhar Rao-led regime.

Harish Rao, who inspected the under-construction Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS) building at L B Nagar along with several BRS MLAs, said the KCR government had initiated works to build four TIMS hospitals around Hyderabad and a 'health city' in Warangal in the wake of the Covid-induced pandemic.

"However, the construction has been moving at a snail's pace after the Congress government assumed office in December 2023," he told reporters here.

He further alleged that the Congress dispensation was ''deliberately delaying the projects to deny KCR credit for their completion.'' "The 'basti dawakhanas' (neighbourhood clinics) started under the BRS regime are also not functioning well now," Harish Rao, a nephew of KCR, claimed.

Countering his charges, Congress whip in the Assembly Aadi Srinivas asked why the BRS government ''failed to complete'' TIMS and other proposed super-speciality hospitals despite being in power for 10 years.

"The BRS government had called for tenders for TIMS just a year before it lost power in 2023. It also did not resolve the long-pending issues at Gandhi Hospital and Osmania General Hospital (OGH), two of the state's largest facilities," he said.

Srinivas noted that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy recently laid the foundation stone for new OGH buildings as the existing Nizam-era structures posed safety risks to patients and staff.

"Harish Rao suddenly remembered people's problems as a bypoll is going to be held for the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency," Srinivas alleged in a video statement.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)