New Delhi, 24 August—In his first reaction to the cancellation of the US leg of his foreign visit by the Centre, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy today held the Modi government’s denial of political clearance for his planned US visit responsible describing the decision an “insult to Telangana”.
Reddy had cancelled the US leg of his two-nation visit on Friday after the Union government denied him clearance.
“The Centre is reluctant to cooperate with Telangana’s development. Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks he is the ambassador for Gujarat,” Revanth Reddy said while addressing a press conference.
“We are registering our protest against the Centre. They cannot run the government in a dictatorial manner,” Reddy thundered.
Reddy also claimed that the Centre had allowed the Gujarat chief minister to visit the US but denied him permission.
Reddy had left for a 10-day visit to the UK and the US earlier this week. He was expected to return to Hyderabad on August 23 after completing the UK leg of the tour, for which political clearance had been granted. The Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) in Hyderabad said he was denied permission to visit the US due to a “political angle”.
Reddy was scheduled to visit Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and Virginia Tech.
The External Affairs Ministry said Reddy’s proposed US visit did not meet the established norms for according political clearance.
“The visit of chief ministers, as indeed of other dignitaries, is assessed by the Ministry of External Affairs in order to accord political clearance,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
“The programme proposed in such cases should be appropriate to the office held and the purpose of the visit. In this particular case, that was not so in respect of the US, and therefore, the clearance was denied, not given”, Jaiswal had underlined.
Jaiswal also pointed out, without elaborating, that political clearance had been granted for Reddy’s visit to the UK.
Reddy alleged during his tour of the UK that there was a “conspiracy” by the Centre and noted that issues such as youth development should be above politics,
Reddy pointed out that the only purpose of his visit was to bring the world’s best institutions to Telangana as part of the country’s New Education Policy and said: “They would have been an answer to our youth’s aspirations to get education, skills and training from the best Ivy Leagues and top global institutions.”
The denial of political clearance for Reddy’s proposed US visit is not an isolated instance. In 2019, the External Affairs Ministry denied then-Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal permission to travel to Denmark. The ministry also refused clearance to Kejriwal’s party colleague and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to attend the Paris Olympics.
In 2018, then-Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan criticised the BJP-led government for denying clearance to state ministers seeking to travel abroad to raise funds following floods.
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