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Modi bitterly betrayed Andhra people: Chandrababu
The visit of AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to New Delhi has ruffled the feathers of the BJP more than what it was when the Telugu Desam Party quit the NDA.
​New Delhi/Hyderabad: The visit of AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to New Delhi has ruffled the feathers of the BJP more than what it was when the Telugu Desam Party quit the NDA.
While Naidu made all-out efforts to express his anguish over the abject neglect of the residual state of Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday and pitched for new impetus to the concept of cooperative federalism, which is being a given a short-shrift by the Narendra Modi dispensation.
Naidu, during his interaction with the leaders of non-BJP political parties at the nation's capital, raised the issue of how the spirit of cooperative federalism which was supposed to be the cornerstone for healthy Centre-state relations had taken a backseat under the present NDA government, in an attempt to strike a chord with them.
Union Minister Prakash Javadekar reacted sharply saying that Naidu was trying to create confusion among the people and that there was no truth in the allegations he was levelling against the Centre. Later in the evening, in his over two-hour-long media-conference at the Constitution Club in New Delhi, the AP Chief Minister said that after waiting for four years hoping that the Prime Minister would keep his word of according special category status for the state, he had stepped out of the NDA.
Naidu has demanded that a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) be appointed to go into the SCS issue. “I ask the present government why can't we have a review? Appoint a joint parliamentary committee to assess the commitments made and actual delivery,'' he said.
In a power point presentation, Naidu gave a blow-by-blow account of how the NDA government had humiliated the Telugu people by withholding the benefits that were constitutionally due to the bleeding state of Andhra Pradesh.
He explained how Andhra Pradesh had struggled in moving forward in the face of little support from the Centre. He gave an elaborate account of how the state, with sheer dint of hard work, had progressed by clocking double digit growth. Despite spurring the economy with his own initiatives, the state's per capita income remained low, because of short sightedness of the Centre at the time of bifurcation of the state.
"I have released white papers on how the state had suffered on account of bifurcation of the state. The state had suffered colossal loss and it is the responsibility of the Centre to help the state overcome the problem staring in its face. “I have visited Delhi 29 times and followed up what the Centre had to do for the state, but to of no avail," he said and explained the circumstances that led to the Centre offering special package instead of special category status which the Prime Minister himself had offered, when he attended the foundation stone-laying ceremony for Amaravati.
Naidu took with a pinch of salt the proposal of the Centre had come with that the state should form a special purpose vehicle for availing the benefits promised under the special package so that it could obtain loans but the catch is that the loans the state raises through SPV would be taken into consideration for calculation over all loan raising eligibility of the state under the FRBM Act.
Naidu expressed concern over the Centre resorting to counter offensive at him when he raised his voice for seeking what is due to the state constitutionally. "Is this fair? I only wanted what they had promised. In return I get a mouthful from the Centre," he said.
He described as white lie the BJP's contention that the 14th Finance Commission had laid down that the special category status would not be given to any state in future. The commission members had stated later that their brief was to decide how the revenues had to be divided between the Centre and the states and that they did not go into special category issue, Naidu said.
Referring to Polavaram, the AP CM said the Centre is yet to reimburse Rs 3,000 crore to the state which it had spent on the project. The Centre is yet to approve the DPR -II for the project with a revised estimate of Rs 58,000 crore.
The Centre had released only Rs 2,500 crore for Amaravati and then suddenly stopped. They say that the state has not submitted utilisation certificates even though it did. The Centre should solve problems and not create problems for the states,” he said.
