Telangana Finance Minister Harish Rao counters Rahul Gandhi's attack on BRS

Hyderabad: Taking exception to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's attack against the BRS, Telangana Finance Minister T Harish Rao has said the BRS is not the 'B Team' of anybody.

Describing BRS as the "A Team" for the poor, he said BRS was born to protect the country from the "clutches of the BJP" as the Congress has been unable to take on the country's ruling party.

Referring to Rahul Gandhi's corruption allegations against the BRS, Harish Rao claimed that people of the country dislodged Congress from power as it has become synonymous with corruption.

"Your party's name itself has become 'scamgress'," he said in a release Sunday night.

It is a "joke" to allege corruption to the tune of Rs one lakh crore in Kaleswaram project as the total cost of the project is Rs 80,321.57 crore, said Harish Rao, a nephew of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Recalling the death of eight people in police firing in Khammam when the Congress was in power in 2007 in undivided Andhra Pradesh during a bandh called by the Left parties as part of 'land for landless poor' agitation, Harish Rao said people would not believe the glib talk of Congress.

Launching a scathing attack on Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said his remote control was with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and described the state's ruling party as "BJP's B-Team" and its new nomenclature, BRS, as 'BJP Rishtedar Samithi'.

Gandhi alleged that the corruption charges against Rao and his party's leaders have made them subservient to the BJP, and asserted that he told all other opposition leaders the Congress would not join any bloc where the BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) was involved.

Gandhi addressed a public meeting at Khammam in Telangana on Sunday.