Amaravati, April 1 (IANS) Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and YSRCP President, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, on Wednesday termed Amaravati as the ‘capital of corruption’ and accused Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu of engineering unprecedented and impractical policies to enrich him and his coterie.
On a day when the Lok Sabha passed a Bill to give statutory recognition to Amaravati as the sole capital of Andhra Pradesh, Jagan Mohan Reddy addressed a press conference here to lash out at Chandrababu Naidu.
He asked from where Chandrababu Naidu would get Rs 2 lakh crore to build the state capital. He also wanted to know long it would take to complete Amaravati.
“When Chandrababu boasted that the capital city is a self-financed model, why were loans taken, allocations made in the budget, which all pointedly speak of the rampant corruption and the layers of scams involved, right from land acquisition to tendering process and the exorbitant rates being given to favoured contractors,” the YSRCP chief said.
The former Chief Minister defended the three capitals formula of the YSRCP government saying it was mooted keeping in view the exorbitant cost and with a view to not burdening the people and continuing the welfare and development process.
“Visakhapatnam as the executive capital, as it already has the infrastructure and with little investment, it would serve the purpose. For regional balance, we kept Amaravati as the legislative capital and Kurnool as the law capital,” he explained.
While making it clear that YSRCP is not against Amaravati or any other region, he said they were only opposing the rampant corruption in the name of capital, the neglect of other regions and welfare and development coming to a grinding halt due to all the focus of the government on Amaravati.
He revealed that YSRCP had also given a plan B to develop the Machilipatnam-Vijayawada-Guntur corridor as the capital region, but it was also not considered.
“Chandrababu has been going ahead with his corrupt practices and speaking of a capital which is tall in talk, exorbitant in cost and pushes the state into a debt trap. We are concerned about the finances of our state and will expose all the scams,” he said.
The YSRCP chief alleged that the resolution for the capital city passed in the House was only to divert the attention of the people, as the Centre has nothing to do with the capital of any state. He pointed out that when Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand were formed, the Centre did not mention the capital cities.
He also stated that while passing the resolution, the Legislative Council was not taken into confidence, as this would have exposed CM Chandrababu’s corruption.
Giving the details of the cost of the five towers being built in Amaravati, YS Jagan said the price being paid to contractors is over Rs 14,000 per square feet, while for quality construction in developed cities the cost is only Rs 4,000 per sq ft.
“For flyovers, he has been spending Rs 170 crore per kilometre, while we spent Rs 35 crore per km, which shows the stark contrast,” YS Jagan said.
YS Jagan stated that when the entire focus is concentrated on Amaravati, other welfare schemes in the fields of education, health, and agriculture take a back seat, and all sections of people are affected. He claimed that the much hyped one lakh acre capital city is now reduced to only 200 acres, as was evident from CM Chandrababu Naidu’s recent speech in the Assembly.
–IANS
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