While Telangana sits atop the largest coal reserves in south India, BRS working president K. T. Rama Rao is asking a sharp question on Tuesday, 29 September 2026: why is the state's Congress government turning away domestic coal at ₹3,800 per tonne in favour of imports priced at ₹9,000 per tonne?

KTR posted the pointed challenge on X, calling the procurement move 'another Tughlaq decision of the Congress government' and demanding to know exactly who benefits from the roughly 2.4× price premium on overseas coal. The reference to the medieval Delhi sultan is a well-worn Opposition shorthand in Indian politics for a policy seen as perverse and self-defeating — and here it lands with deliberate force.

What makes Singareni so central to Telangana's power story

Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) is jointly owned by the Telangana government and the Government of India, making it one of the few large public-sector mining enterprises where a state holds a controlling stake. Its coal blocks underpin thermal generation not just for Telangana but also supply Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra — a supply footprint that gives the company outsized political and economic significance in the south.

KTR anchors his attack in the performance record of the previous BRS administration under former Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. During 9.5 years of the KCR government (2014–2023), he argues, TS Genco — the Telangana State Power Generation Corporation — ran its plants on Singareni coal and delivered 24/7 power supply across the state. Whether or not one accepts every element of that claim, the baseline is clear: domestic coal was the model, and it worked.

The ₹5,200 per tonne question

The arithmetic at the heart of KTR's post is brutal in its simplicity. A gap of ₹5,200 per tonne between local Singareni coal and imported coal, multiplied across the volumes a state utility consumes annually, runs into hundreds of crores — costs that eventually filter through to electricity bills paid by households, farmers and industry. That is the 'burden' KTR says the people of Telangana should not be made to bear.

The Congress government in Hyderabad has not, as of this writing, publicly detailed the rationale for any shift in procurement toward imports. Official TS Genco tender documents and state energy department statements in the coming weeks will be watched closely — both for the stated logic and for any revision to consumer tariffs that might follow.

BRS vs Congress: the post-2023 battle for the narrative

Since the Congress party swept the 2023 Telangana assembly elections, ending a decade of BRS rule, the two parties have locked into a steady pattern of charge and counter-charge on power, finance and industrial policy. KTR, functioning as the face of the Opposition, has repeatedly tried to draw a contrast between BRS-era self-reliance on local resources and what he portrays as Congress-era decisions that favour external vendors at the public's expense.

This post fits that template — but the specific price figures, if they hold up under scrutiny, give it concrete bite beyond ordinary political sparring. 'For whose benefit is this being done?' is not just rhetoric; it is an invitation for investigative scrutiny of procurement contracts.

Coal policy, electricity affordability and the future of Singareni workers are now squarely on Telangana's political agenda. The Congress government's next move on this file will be watched by consumers, coal workers and rival party alike.