The Twitter war between the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the BJP has taken a new turn with the BJP national president Amit Shah's handle tweeting in Telugu to take the fight into the rival camp.
In his first tweet in Telugu, Amit Shah strongly objected to the Telangana Government keeping itself out of the "Ayushman Bharat" nationwide health insurance scheme and it evoked an immediate response from the State's Information Technology Minister K Taraka Rama Rao.
While Amit Shah said that TRS was being selfish by refusing to implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme, Rama Rao pointed out that the State was already implementing health an insurance scheme, Aarogya Sri.
Amit Shah said in his tweet in Telugu that it was saddening to see that the people of Telangana were not able to benefit from the scheme because of the selfish thought of TRS, KTR shot back on Twitter, "you are clearly misinformed @amithshah ji. The successful Arogya Sri program of Telangana is far superior in terms of coverage (80 lakh families) in comparison to Ayushmann Bharat (only 25 lakh families in Telangana). We are a role model sate in universal health coverage".
While Ayushmann Bharat scheme provides a coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family per annum Arogya Sri provides an annual coverage of Rs 2 lakh per below poverty line family and it can be extended to Rs 13 lakh on cases to case basis.
State Health Minister C Lakshma Reddy also joined the war of words pointing out that the 8 million families in the State were benefiting from the free of cost medical treatment under the Arogya Sri scheme. He argued that if the Central Government scheme was implemented it will create complications as identifying only 25 lakh beneficiaries out of 80 lakh and leaving out 55 lakh families will be difficult.
Amit Shah said that the TRS Government should explain to the people why it had not implemented the scheme and deprived the poor people of the benefit. Amit Shah's handle tweeting in Telugu was being seen as an indication of the BJP's strategy to put the IT tools and the social media to the full use in the run-up to the Assembly elections.