Naidu lying on Centre's help to cover up his failures: BJP

Vijayawada: Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was resorting to malicious propaganda against the BJP government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on allocation of funds for the development of the State in spite of getting all kinds of support from the Central government during the last five years.

He alleged that the Chief Minister was blaming the Union government to cover his failures and unpopularity in the State. The Railway Minister released the BJP manifesto for the Andhra Pradesh elections 2019 at a private function hall here and addressed the party functionaries.

He alleged that Naidu had taken a U-turn on the Special Category Status (SCS) and was now blaming the Centre that the latter is not co-operating for the development of the State. He said initially the Chief Minister had asked for the SCS and later agreed to the Special Package.He displayed the letters sent by the Andhra Pradesh government to the Union government accepting the special package.

Goyal explained that the Union government had created railway zone as per AP Reorganisation Act-2014 with Visakhapatnam as headquarters. He said road and inland transport projects worth more than Rs 1 lakh crore were approved and works under Sagarmala Project have been approved with an outlay of Rs 164 lakh crore for Andhra Pradesh. Railway projects worth Rs 50,000 crore are at various stages of execution.

He said the Central government announced Polavaram as national project and immediately sanctioned Rs 7,000 crore. He said Rs 3,500 crore was sanctioned to capital Amaravati and reminded that Rs 2,500 crore was released long back. The Railway Minister said, "I wonder why the TDP government did not construct one permanent structure in capital Amaravati in five years."

He said temporary structures were built with very poor quality and water is leaking from the Assembly building in rainy season.

He exuded confidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be re-elected in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections and added that development of the country would be possible only under NDA rule.

BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana, MP GVL Narasimha Rao, Manifesto Committee chairman and former Chief Secretary I Y R Krishna Rao, Narsapuram MP Gokaraju Ganga Raju, MLC P Madhav, BJP candidates contesting for Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies in Krishna district attended the meeting.