 "Telangana Vs United AP takes centre stage in 2013")
The year 2013 ends on a promise of drawing curtains soon on the prolonged political uncertainty in Andhra Pradesh involving the issue of state bifurcation even though the industry and businesses are not sure if the hard times would end anytime soon.
The state government tabled the draft Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill in the legislative Assembly earlier this month after President Pranab Mukherjee asked the state legislature's views on it by January 23, 2014.
Leaders of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions are opposing the Bill cutting across political parties as the issue of bifurcation is expected to take the centre stage in the next general elections.
The debate on the Bill is expected to begin when the Assembly reconvenes from January 3. The leaders and political parties have been meeting the President, who is in Hyderabad on a southern sojourn, making presentations in favour of their political stands on the issue of division.
A near unanimous view that the bifurcation would benefit the Congress in the Telangana region while it will be badly punished in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema has become central to the strategies of all the political parties. Predictably, the YSR Congress Party led by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu have already embarked on a full-fledged campaign in the Seemandhra region to fill the political space that is expected to be vacated by the Congress party in the next elections.
In a bid to secure the political future in the next elections, a few Congressmen from Seemandhra are hoping to find a new political identity for themselves either through the existing political parties or through a new political party rumoured to be floated by their own leaders, but not certain. A real time of uncertainties for the politicians and the political parties are about to begin with the state bifurcation, say political observers.
On September 23, the trial court ended the 16-month-long jail term to Jagan by granting him bail in the quid pro quo investment case. This came within a month of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) endorsing the proposal to divide AP on July 30 setting an intense competition between the YSR Congress and the TDP in opposing the Congress' decision by organising protests across Seemandhra. With the YSR Congress openly coming out against division, the party has turned a non-entity in Telangana.
The CWC decision led to an anti-bifurcation agitation that lasted more than 40 days with the government employees and the staff of public utilities such as the state road transport corporation and discoms in the 13 Seemandhra districts joining the strike.
Business
On the business and economy front, the industry faced the worse-ever power crisis in 2013 in addition to the downtrend experienced by sectors that are associated with construction and infrastructure, including real estate and cement, in Hyderabad and across the state on the issue of bifurcation. Even the retail businesses took a hit in Hyderabad while the industrialists based in the city said their future investment decisions would depend on how things pan out if the state gets divided.
“The business scenario is getting affected with a slight change in the opinion on what is going to happen with the issue of state bifurcation. This is causing tremendous uncertainty in the real estate sector,” director of a prominent city-based construction company told Business Standard. The cement industry in AP is operating at around 50 per cent of the capacity owing to the surplus capacity in production combined with a decline in consumption in the state.
Agriculture
Though the state received good rains helping the kharif crops, cyclones and heavy rains that followed afterwards caused unprecedented damage to crops in coastal Andhra and other regions later in the year. About 1.1 million hectares of paddy and other major crops were affected by the heavy rains that occurred from October 21-26.
Rains damaged paddy in about 471,000 hectares and cotton in 597,000 hectares with little or no prospect of recovery. The state has a total crop area of over 8 million hectares in the current kharif season. Of this, 11,37,391 hectares or close to 15 per cent of the total crop area got affected by the rains and flooding, the agriculture department officials said.
Positives
Amidst all the negative sentiment, the year saw good progress on the metro rail project. About Rs 4,000 crore had been spent on the project till date, said N V S Reddy, managing director of Hyderabad Metro. The decision to go for precast mode for most of the structures, including viaducts and stations, has helped matters in executing the project even in the most congestive areas, according to him.
The government said it was able to attract and facilitate execution of projects with a combined investment of Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the state. New big ticket projects such as Isuzu Motors’ truck unit and PepsiCo’s beverages manufacturing plant were announced during the year while Mahindra & Mahindra launched its largest tractor manufacturing unit at its existing small truck manufacturing location in Medak district in the Telangana region.
The state government also announced that it had received the Centre’s clearance for the IT investment region project for Hyderabad and for three manufacturing investment zones, one each in Telangana, coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions.
The state government tabled the draft Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill in the legislative Assembly earlier this month after President Pranab Mukherjee asked the state legislature's views on it by January 23, 2014.
Leaders of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions are opposing the Bill cutting across political parties as the issue of bifurcation is expected to take the centre stage in the next general elections.
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While the leaders of coastal Andhra have created an impression among their electorate that they are still on the job of stalling the bifurcation bid, the Telangana region leaders claim that the next general elections would be held in two Telugu states and no force can stop the separate statehood for the region.
The debate on the Bill is expected to begin when the Assembly reconvenes from January 3. The leaders and political parties have been meeting the President, who is in Hyderabad on a southern sojourn, making presentations in favour of their political stands on the issue of division.
A near unanimous view that the bifurcation would benefit the Congress in the Telangana region while it will be badly punished in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema has become central to the strategies of all the political parties. Predictably, the YSR Congress Party led by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led by former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu have already embarked on a full-fledged campaign in the Seemandhra region to fill the political space that is expected to be vacated by the Congress party in the next elections.
In a bid to secure the political future in the next elections, a few Congressmen from Seemandhra are hoping to find a new political identity for themselves either through the existing political parties or through a new political party rumoured to be floated by their own leaders, but not certain. A real time of uncertainties for the politicians and the political parties are about to begin with the state bifurcation, say political observers.
On September 23, the trial court ended the 16-month-long jail term to Jagan by granting him bail in the quid pro quo investment case. This came within a month of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) endorsing the proposal to divide AP on July 30 setting an intense competition between the YSR Congress and the TDP in opposing the Congress' decision by organising protests across Seemandhra. With the YSR Congress openly coming out against division, the party has turned a non-entity in Telangana.
The CWC decision led to an anti-bifurcation agitation that lasted more than 40 days with the government employees and the staff of public utilities such as the state road transport corporation and discoms in the 13 Seemandhra districts joining the strike.
Business
On the business and economy front, the industry faced the worse-ever power crisis in 2013 in addition to the downtrend experienced by sectors that are associated with construction and infrastructure, including real estate and cement, in Hyderabad and across the state on the issue of bifurcation. Even the retail businesses took a hit in Hyderabad while the industrialists based in the city said their future investment decisions would depend on how things pan out if the state gets divided.
“The business scenario is getting affected with a slight change in the opinion on what is going to happen with the issue of state bifurcation. This is causing tremendous uncertainty in the real estate sector,” director of a prominent city-based construction company told Business Standard. The cement industry in AP is operating at around 50 per cent of the capacity owing to the surplus capacity in production combined with a decline in consumption in the state.
Agriculture
Though the state received good rains helping the kharif crops, cyclones and heavy rains that followed afterwards caused unprecedented damage to crops in coastal Andhra and other regions later in the year. About 1.1 million hectares of paddy and other major crops were affected by the heavy rains that occurred from October 21-26.
Rains damaged paddy in about 471,000 hectares and cotton in 597,000 hectares with little or no prospect of recovery. The state has a total crop area of over 8 million hectares in the current kharif season. Of this, 11,37,391 hectares or close to 15 per cent of the total crop area got affected by the rains and flooding, the agriculture department officials said.
Positives
Amidst all the negative sentiment, the year saw good progress on the metro rail project. About Rs 4,000 crore had been spent on the project till date, said N V S Reddy, managing director of Hyderabad Metro. The decision to go for precast mode for most of the structures, including viaducts and stations, has helped matters in executing the project even in the most congestive areas, according to him.
The government said it was able to attract and facilitate execution of projects with a combined investment of Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the state. New big ticket projects such as Isuzu Motors’ truck unit and PepsiCo’s beverages manufacturing plant were announced during the year while Mahindra & Mahindra launched its largest tractor manufacturing unit at its existing small truck manufacturing location in Medak district in the Telangana region.
The state government also announced that it had received the Centre’s clearance for the IT investment region project for Hyderabad and for three manufacturing investment zones, one each in Telangana, coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions.