Sanjay Dhotre's statement on ITIR is factually incorrect: KTR

Minister for IT and Industries K T Rama Rao on Thursday said the statement made by Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre on ITIR, Hyderabad, in Lok Sabha on Wednesday was factually incorrect.

Rama Rao said that despite the State government submitting all necessary information, Detailed Project Report (DPR) and several reminders in the last six years, the Union Minister chose to mislead the House by stating that Telangana was asked to submit the required information to the Ministries concerned with intimation to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and that the State had not furnished any information. 

The Union Minister was replying to a question raised by BJP MP from Karimnagar Bandi Sanjay Kumar.

“It is very unfair on the part of the NDA government and the Telangana BJP leaders to blame the Telangana government despite repeated requests to the Union government from the State government. The first such letter was written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao as soon as the State of Telangana was formed in June 2014,” Rama Rao said in a statement here.

Pointing out that another detailed memorandum was submitted by him on the ITIR Project to the Union government in September 2014, the Minister said that in June, 2016, he met the then Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya to present a DPR on the ITIR



project in response to the latter’s comments that the State government had not submitted the project report.

He recalled that while addressing the media after meeting with Dattatreya, he had said: “Though the Telangana government presented a project report on ITIR twice, Dattatreya commented that we did not submit the DPR. Probably he might have been misguided by officials. To put things straight and make facts clear, I have personally met him, informed him, and also presented the DPR of ITIR once again.”

Several reminders about the ITIR Project were submitted to the Prime Minister and Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over the last six years. “Yet, the NDA government chose to ignore these requests. The intention to discontinue with the ITIR Project was very clearly understood by the noncommittal responses of the NDA Government,” he said.

Rama Rao said that in January, 2021, he had written again to Ravi Shankar Prasad requesting funds for the ITIR Project. “Yet, the Union government did not allocate a single rupee in the current year’s budget,” he said, adding that these were the facts, it was unfortunate that Sanjay Dhotre chose to issue a factually incorrect statement. “It is also irresponsible on the part of State BJP leaders to resort to a smear campaign against the Telangana

State Government without ascertaining facts,” he said.