Revanth calls a Rahul Gandhi premiership a historical necessity and YSR’s last wish

Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy used the Dr YSR Awards 2026 in New Delhi on 2 September to argue that making Rahul Gandhi Prime Minister is a “historical necessity” and was Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s last wish — a fitting tribute, he said, while the party works under Mallikarjun Kharge.

The programme was organised by the Dr YSR and Dr K.V.P. Foundation. Revanth’s second line was irrigation continuity. He said Pranahita-Chevella, the Kalvakurthy lift irrigation scheme and the Srisailam Left Bank Canal, initiated by YSR, should be completed and dedicated to the people of Telangana. Those projects, he said, later stalled.

He listed YSR’s farm politics as the moral inheritance: free electricity to farmers, a waiver of electricity dues of ₹1,300 crore, and withdrawal of cases against farmers. He then ran a Congress genealogy. Jawaharlal Nehru, in this telling, stood for education and irrigation and for turning India into a food-exporting nation. Indira Gandhi stood for support prices and assigned land.

Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka linked YSR to M.S. Swaminathan. Award-2026 cash of ₹25 lakh goes to the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. Vikramarka recalled that he had been Chief Whip during YSR’s tenure, and the evening also turned on K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao’s friendship and foundation.

A New Delhi award night is not a Cabinet note, but it is a national-stage claim. Revanth is a Congress Chief Minister whose Telangana government is fighting BRS at home; invoking YSR, a YSRCP icon in Andhra, on a Delhi stage is a deliberate Congress claim on the Reddy-era welfare memory across the two States. Calling a Rahul Gandhi premiership YSR’s last wish folds that memory into the 2024-and-after national leadership fight, under Kharge’s organisational umbrella.

The irrigation names are not decoration. Pranahita-Chevella, Kalvakurthy LIS and SLBC are live Telangana water files. Saying YSR initiated them and that they later stalled is a charge against successor governments — including, by implication, the BRS years — without, in this locked record, a new administrative order to finish them. The desk records the promise to complete and dedicate; it does not invent a fresh sanction or a commissioning date.

₹1,300 crore in waived farm power dues is the rupee fact attached to the YSR portrait. ₹25 lakh to MSSRF is the rupee fact attached to the 2026 award. Neither figure is a Telangana budget line for 2026–27 in this filing; they are historical waiver and award cash as stated on 2 September.

What the public record of this event does not show is a list of other awardees, a full citation of YSR’s “last wish” beyond Revanth’s attribution, or a project-wise completion timetable. This cutting does not invent those. It records the historical-necessity quote, the Kharge line, the three stalled-then-to-be-finished projects, the farm-power waiver and case-withdrawal inheritance, the Nehru–Indira genealogy, Vikramarka’s Chief Whip memory, and ₹25 lakh to the Swaminathan foundation.