Behind denial of nod for Revanth’s US trip, his tentative meetings with Vance, Mamdani

Telangana CM Revanth Reddy at a meeting with a Cambridge University team in UK, Saturday. (X/@revanth_anumula) 5 min readHyderabad, New DelhiAug 23, 2026 03:02 PM IST First published on: Aug 23, 2026 at 06:30 AM IST Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s visit to the United States included possible meetings with Vice President J D Vance and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on August 26, The Indian Express has learnt. The Chief Minister’s Office, when contacted, said the meeting with the NYC Mayor was “tentative”. “There are a lot of events which are added to the schedule. No official communication was exchanged between the Mayor of New York and the CM’s office,” the CMO said.Government sources in New Delhi confirmed to The Indian Express that the Chief Minister was planning to meet Vance and Mamdani during his visit. Explaining the reasons for the Indian government denying clearance to Reddy’s US visit, sources said that the Ministry of External Affairs — while issuing political clearance — looked at two basic aspects: the “level” of meetings and the “purpose”.

The application for political clearance cited “Rising Telangana”, an investment promotion programme by the Telangana government led by Reddy, according to sources. This was the ostensible reason for his visit to the US. The level of meetings means that the Chief Minister is expected to meet his counterparts in the US. So, a New York Governor would be appropriate, but a New York City Mayor is seen as some levels below the Telangana Chief Minister’s position. Also, a meeting with the Vice President does not fit with the purpose of the delegation, sources reasoned. Since the purpose was to attract investments into Telangana and put it on the global investment map, the two meetings were seen to be “political meetings” and not for the purpose of investment promotion, sources said. These are the reasons why the Indian government denied permission, sources said.

My deepest gratitude for the strong support from our leader and Congress party national president, Shri Mallikarjun Kharge ji @kharge on the issue of Centre denying me permission to travel to the USA. I am very thankful to my party, all the leaders and people across the country… — Revanth Reddy (@revanth_anumula) August 23, 2026 For the record, on why permission was denied for Reddy’s US visit, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters on Friday, “The visit of Chief Ministers, as indeed other dignitaries, is assessed by the Ministry in order to accord political clearance. The programme proposed in such cases should be appropriate to the office held and the purpose of the visit. In this particular case, that was not so in respect of the US. Therefore, clearance has not been given. Incidentally, his visit to the UK has been cleared.”

On Saturday, the possible meeting with the NYC Mayor snowballed into a row in Telangana. Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), the primary opposition, asked whether the Centre denied permission to Reddy because he may have met Mamdani. “What does ‘inappropriate’ mean? The Centre and state government must explain the cancellation of the CM’s US visit,” BRS MLC Dr Dasoju Sravan said. Arvind Dharmapuri, the BJP MP from Nizamabad, said, “Telangana deserves to know: what business did Revanth Reddy have with Mamdani? Just days ago, Mamdani skipped NYC’s main India Day Parade but attended a Pakistan Day event and publicly praised the Pakistani community and its roots.” “Mamdani previously also wrote a personal letter, expressing solidarity, to Umar Khalid, an accused booked under the UAPA in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case,” he said.

According to an itinerary accessed by The Indian Express, Reddy was also supposed to meet and greet the Indian community at a programme organised by the Indian Overseas Congress. Reddy was supposed to visit Harvard University on August 25, where an MoU was to be signed, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, Northeastern University, and Virginia Tech. The CM had earlier instructed the delegation to proceed with the US tour and to sign MoUs with top educational institutions in his absence. About his visit to the US, he had said, “The only purpose of the visit was to, as part of the Centre’s new education policy, bring the world’s best institutions to India, to Telangana, to Hyderabad. They would have been an answer to our youth’s aspirations to get education, skills, and training from the best Ivy Leagues and top global institutions.” With inputs from Sreenivas Janyala