Bharatiya Janata Party Telangana state unit president Bandi Sanjay on Friday vowed to get the domes of the newly-built Telangana secretariat demolished, if his party is voted to power in the next assembly elections in the state.
“If the BJP comes to power in the next elections, we shall demolish the domes of the secretariat building as they reflect the culture of the Nizam regime,” Sanjay said while addressing a meeting of the party functionaries at Boinpally in Hyderabad.
The BJP state president’s comments came within days of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president A Revanth Reddy giving a call to Maoists to “blow up Pragati Bhavan, the official bungalow of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, with grenades, as it turned out to be a fortress for the common people”.
Sanjay said once the BJP government was formed after the next elections, it would remove the structures that “remained symbols of slavery of the Nizam regime”. “We shall erase the cultural symbols of the Nizam in Telangana, including the domes of the newly-built secretariat,” he said.
Sanjay declared that the BJP would make suitable changes in the secretariat complex that reflect the culture and tradition of India and Telangana. “Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao converted the peoples’ secretariat into a tomb on the lines of Taj Mahal only to see happiness in the eyes of his friend (Asaduddin) Owaisi (All India Majils-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president),” he alleged.
Sanjay also announced that Pragati Bhavan, the official bungalow of the chief minister, would also be converted into a Praja Darbar.
Reacting to the chief minister’s statement that the “government would demolish places of worship that cause hurdles for the expansion of roads”, the BJP president challenged KCR to demolish, if he could, the mosques that were built in the middle of the roads in the old city of Hyderabad.
Ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi reacted strongly to Sanjay’s comments. “The BJP state president is speaking like a terrorist. When KCR has built a magnificent secretariat, Sanjay is talking of demolishing its domes. The day is not far off when people will demolish the BJP in the country,” BRS legislator and public accounts committee chairman A Jeevan Reddy said.
He said Sanjay had forgotten the fact that even the assembly buildings of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat assemblies have domes. “Let him demolish them first, before thinking of pulling down the domes of Telangana secretariat,” Reddy said.
State agriculture minister S Niranjan Reddy said the opposition party leaders were speaking in an uncivilised manner. “Domes of state secretariat are engineering marvels. Even the Supreme Court has a dome; and so has several other state assemblies. Will they, too, be demolished? The BJP national leadership should think about sacking Sanjay from the state BJP chief post,” he said.
