Telangana Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao has promised to model the Old City of Hyderabad after Istanbul, a well-known heritage city in Turkey. A team of legislators and officials will soon be sent to Istanbul to study the conservation of the city’s heritage character so that it can be replicated here.

Vowing to make the twin cities slum-free by providing in situ housing for all the poor, he said the central prison in Chanchalguda will be removed and the Race Course in Malakpet will be shifted to accommodate schools for poor children.

Also promised by Mr.Rao was piped drinking water supply for all houses in Telangana in the next four years.

The chief minister ventured to speak, despite severe cold, at a large public meeting on Wednesday, organised to welcome MLAs Teegala Krishna Reddy and Talasani Srinivas Yadav, and MLC V.Gangadhar Goud into the TRS fold.

The meeting was organised on the premises of TKR Group of institutions, Meerpet, where many followers and loyalists of Mr. Krishna Reddy, including his sons, joined the TRS. “I’m not looking at it as a cheap political move by the legislators. Rather, they have taken the decision so that the Telangana State could be sustained,” Mr.Rao said, of the defecting legislators.

He announced sanction of four-lane road from Pahadi Sharif to the Shamshabad airport, and said works have been sanctioned for an EHT substation at Mr.Krishna Reddy’s constituency Maheshwaram.

Lambasting his arch rival N.Chandrababu Naidu, he said the existing power shortage was a problem created by the successive regimes of TDP and Congress. “You have pulled the fuse for Telangana, and made your henchmen plan a bus yatra,” he thundered at Mr.Naidu. He reiterated his statement that after three years from now, Telangana will not lose power even for a blink. Assuring that people from Andhra Pradesh too are welcome to stay in Telangana as people from any other state, he also promised a red-carpet welcome for capitalists from the neighbouring state to invest here.

Talasani Srinivas Yadav launched a tirade against Mr.Naidu, and said he was deliberately creating problems for Telangana. Sensing the Telangana TDP MLAs’ plans to defect, Mr.Naidu called for a meeting, and sought to bribe them, he alleged.

In contrast to Mr.Yadav, Mr.Krishna Reddy limited himself to a written speech and said he was forced to leave TDP after 32 years as he felt the constituency would be better developed if he was in TRS.