Naidu justifies anti-Modi stance, says justice for Andhra his top priority

"Andhra Pradesh is feeling betrayed. Andhra people feel hurt and wounded at all the unkept promises" , says Naidu

Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, says his strident stance against the central government is fully justified. Brushing aside ‘political’ issues of aligning with a broader opposition to remove the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre, he said his concerns were national but the immediate issue was ‘justice for Andhra Pradesh’.

“Andhra Pradesh is feeling betrayed. Andhra people feel hurt and wounded at all the unkept promises” Naidu said, sounding much like his late father-in-law, N T Rama Rao, when the latter launched the Telugu Desam Party in the early 1980s.

Naidu repeated what his Lok Sabha members had said in the no-confidence motion debate on Friday. That the Centre had not played a straight bat with AP, keeping back finances, grants and entitlements promised during the state’s bifurcation.

He said the PM had cited the 14th Finance Commission as reason for denying Andhra a ‘special category’ status. However, the Centre had extended this treatment and announced budget allocations to 11 states after 2017. More, both the chairman of the Commission, Y V Reddy, as well as its member, Govinda Rao, had ‘stated categorically’ that the report made no such recommendation.

Also, he noted, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had itself sought special category state status for AP in 2014, including in a speech at Tirupati by the PM. Also, Naidu charged, the Centre had ‘taken back’ Rs 3.5 billion originally granted as special development package for his state’s backward areas. Soon after, however, packages were announced for Bundelkhand in UP and the KBK region of Odisha. “The people of Andhra feel they have been cheated and deceived by the BJP-led NDA government,” Naidu declared.

He listed the ‘injustices’. ‘For a population of 58 per cent, estimated revenue of 46 per cent (both proportions from undivided Andhra) is given to AP. Assets had been allotted on a location basis to Telangana but liabilities were on the basis of population. Accordingly, pension and debt liabilities are on the basis of population. Deferred tax collections have been allocated on a location basis but refund of taxes has been done on the basis of population. This had resulted in a loss of revenue for AP of Rs 3.8 billion.

The result, said the CM, was that Andhra had been left with no state capital — Hyderabad, main growth engine of the undivided state, was given to Telangana. “I built Hyderabad. I built Cyberabad. I built ISB. I built the outer ring road and the new airport. And, now, AP’s services revenue is badly affected because all this is with Telangana.” 

He sought support for his ‘struggle’ to establish Amaravati, the new capital under construction, as the ‘best city in India’.

He gave other instances. Centrally owned ONGC had bought GSPC, a Gujarat government undertaking, for Rs 270 billion. However, for the petrochemical complex planned in AP, the central government was seeking viability gap funding from the state of Rs 11.23  billion annually for 15 years.

His government, he said, might take legal recourse on its grievances and for non-implementation of the AP Reorganisation Act.

Other grievances of his are delays in creating new educational institutions in AP, though land, water and other  infrastructure facilities have been cleared by the state. “For the capital’s construction, the central government has released only Rs 1.5 billion. But, more than Rs 20 billion is being spent on erecting statues. Nearly Rs 270 billion has been allocated for a convention centre at Dwarka (in Delhi).”

On a personal note, Naidu said the PM had compared him with political rival Jaganmohan Reddy, who had been in jail on corruption charges. Why, he demanded, was it was taking so long for the central government to prosecute Reddy when several charges of foreign exchange violation had been filed against him?