Uttar Pradesh Minister for MSME and Investments Sidharth Nath Singh said Lucknow was working very well as the capital of his State which has 75 districts and 230 million people, suggesting that there is no reason why administration of Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) could not be done from a single location (Amaravati).
Addressing media persons here on Wednesday, Mr. Singh, who was previously BJP’s Andhra Pradesh affairs in-charge, said decentralisation was a concept of power, not of executive and legislative bodies and the powers thereof could not be separated (decentralised) because they need to be at one place to work together.
Mr. Singh said the government of U.P. was functioning without any problem from Lucknow and that he would not mind showing to officers from A.P. how it was working, stating that he was clear about what should be done for development.
He pointed out that none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation for Amaravati and the Centre did not give funds for the construction of any capital city except the present capital of A.P.
The BJP has already made its stand clear, that development should be decentralised, not administration, he added.
‘CAA not against minorities’
On the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Mr. Singh said the opposition parties were playing vote bank politics by spreading the word that it was meant to remove the citizenship of some minority communities.
People were instigated to revolt against the Central government even as it tried to allay their apprehensions. He insisted that the minorities benefited the most out of the slew of welfare schemes being implemented by the Centre and recalled that both the YSR Congress and TDP supported the CAA in Parliament.
BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana, vice-president T. Nagabhushanam, minority morcha national secretary Sk. Baji and party spokesman V. Srinivasa Raju were present.
