The concessions extended by Andhra Pradesh government to the proposed Indian School of Business (ISB) has come in for criticism from political parties in the state.
While the opposition Congress demanded that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the state and the IBS board be made public and a white paper released on the deal, the BJP charged Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu with "colluding" with "corrupt" industrialists to locate the school near Hyderabad.
Naidu termed the BJP charge as "mean" and said the opposition should at least "keep quiet" if they could not appreciate the development.
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Stating that the BJP and Congress charges indicated the "meanness" of our politicians, Naidu asserted that the location of the school near Hyderabad was not "an affair between a company and an individual". The country's top 14 corporate entities had joined together and all that the government had done was to offer them land and other facilities. He said 250 acres of land was offered to IBS at Rs 25,000 an acre and the stamp duty and registration charges were waived. Water and power were also provided free.
Naidu said he had nothing to hide on the deal and the MoU could be made public. He regretted that while Maharashtra and Karnataka were "sad" at losing the business school, "here the opposition is sad that it is being located in Hyderabad".
The Chief Minister said he had been working endlessly with a single agenda_to develop Andhra Pradesh as a role model. On the Congress' charge that he had managed to get himself nominated as the "Businessman of the Year", Naidu said the award was given by a financial newspaper and not by any corporate house.
Congress Legislature Party leader P Janardhan Reddy had said "going by the way the Chief Minister is speaking about the project (ISB), it appears that he is rewarding industrialists for the `Businessman of the Year' award".
Reddy had also demanded that 50 per cent of the seats in the business school be reserved for locals besides statutory reservations for Scheduled Castes/Tribes and Backward Classes.
Naidu explained that admission to the prestigious institution would be based purely on merits.