Says he can be “more terrible” to curb injustice

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao accepted the “Hitler” tag given to him by the Opposition over his style of functioning and warned that he could be “more terrible than Hitler” to curb injustice.

Responding to the charges levelled against him by the Opposition, Mr. Rao told a news conference here on Sunday that he would like to be Hitler or a bigger dictator when it came to dealing with pilferages in government benefits. But, he wondered, why the Opposition was after him so early in the innings when he was trying to cleanse a highly corrupted system. The governments were slow starters in the past as they did nothing worthwhile in the first six months.

There are almost five years left for the government. The Opposition should wait to judge my performance, he said.

Asserting that he was not one to be scared, Mr. Rao said the criticism of the Opposition was misplaced as it was not aware of the damage done by previous governments. There were 22 lakh more ration cards in circulation than the number of households. He said that he is only trying to set right the situation with the intensive household survey on Tuesday.

The criticism by Opposition is so low that it went to the extent of finding fault with him for celebrating the Independence Day at Golconda fort. It was an eleventh century fort which was the pride of Telangana but never entered the records of world heritage. After the latest function, the fort is set to enter the records and boost tourist traffic, he said.

Mr. Rao said he had called the Centre’s move to empower Governor fascist and not Modi himself. He also said the State government would be good to Centre if the latter is good to it.