YSRCP general secretary Dadi Veerabhadra Rao on Thursday asked TDP national president N. Chandrababu Naidu to seek re-election from the 23 Assembly constituencies his party won.
By opposing the establishment of three capitals – Visakhapatnam (Executive), Amaravati (Legislative) and Kurnool (Judicial), and, thereby, opposing the development of the North Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, Mr. Naidu was acting as a leader representing just the 29 villages in the capital region.
Mr. Naidu was trying to project Visakhapatnam as a city prone to cyclones and, therefore, unfit to be made the Executive capital, Mr. Veerabhadra Rao alleged while addressing the media here.
When cyclone Hudhud struck the city in October 2014, when Mr. Naidu was the Chief Minister, not a single human life was lost, and all the industries revived their operations in a short time, Mr. Veerabhadra Rao said.
The cyclone had hit the coast once in the last 100 years, and there was no justification to oppose the location of Executive capital in Visakhapatnam, he said, and pointed out how Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai had become capitals.
“Several countries too have made their coastal cities national capitals,” the YSRCP leader claimed, and alleged that Mr. Naidu had stayed in a bus in the Collectorate to supervise the Hudhud relief operations just to gain political mileage.
Even after losing power, Mr. Naidu was behaving as if he could influence the powers-that-be to reject the State Cabinet’s resolution to abolish the Legislative Council.
Following in the footsteps of N.T. Rama Rao, who, as National Front Chairman, had asked the constituent parties to secure the resignation of their MPs over the Bofors issue, Mr. Naidu should ask his MLAs to resign and seek re-election over the three capitals issue.
Welcoming BJP MP G.V.L. Narasimha Rao’s statement that his party would discharge its constitutional duty on the Council’s abolition, Mr. Rao hoped that the Bill on it would be tabled in both Houses of Parliament soon.
