AP is the only State devoid of capital: Naidu

Venkatagiri (Tirupati dist): Declaring that the countdown for the winding up of the YSRCP Government has already started, TDP national president N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday blamed Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy for putting a brake on the development of Amaravati as the capital and said now the situation has come to such a pass that people of Andhra Pradesh have to hang their heads in shame for not having any capital city.

Addressing a huge public rally here as part of ‘Ra Kadili Ra’ programme, he ridiculed the three-capital plan of the Chief Minister and said at present, AP is going to general elections without any capital. Unlike the people of Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and other States, the people of AP have no capital to boast of as their own.

“Jagan is in a vengeful mood. All the projects mooted by him during the erstwhile TDP Government have either been spiked or put on hold on some plea or the other. No section of people be it women, Dalits or the youth are happy with the Tuglaq rule and waiting for the time to dislodge YSRCP Government and give a decisive mandate to the TDP-Jana Sena Party to rule for five years,” he said.

The former Chief Minister recalled how he wanted to develop Nellore-Tirupati and Chennai as tricities with proper linkages and said he wanted a greenfield airport at Nellore and establishing good connectivity to Chennai and Tirupati with the Krishnapatnam Port.

“I wanted to develop Tirupati as an electronic hub and bring more investments to the region,” he said, adding during the recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jagan did not raise the Special Category Status (SCS). Referring to the claim that 98 per cent of the promises given during the elections have been completed by the YSRCP Government, he said despite getting a good number of MLA and MP seats why Jagan failed to exert pressure on the Centre to fulfil the promises made at the time of bifurcation including granting SCS to Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu said after coming to power, he had promised to declare total prohibition and restoration of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) to the government employees. Instead of imposing total prohibition, he obtained loans amounting to Rs 36,000 crore by pledging revenue from liquor sales for the next 30 years. OPS revival was ruled out as unviable.