Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State president Somu Veerraju said Amaravati would be developed as the capital city at a cost of ₹12,000 crore if his party is voted to power in the 2024 Assembly elections, and said that the party would mobilise from the Centre funds equivalent to what the Special Category Status was estimated to yield.
“Former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had failed in constructing his dream capital while Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is in a hurry to shift to Visakhapatnam,” Mr. Veerraju said in a brief interaction with the media at Penuganchiprolu in Krishna district on Monday morning.
The State government was making grand statements but most of them were rhetorical. It lacked sincerity in fulfilling its obligations, Mr. Veerraju said, and reiterated that the Jinnah Tower in Guntur should either be dismantled or renamed after former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Meanwhile, in a tweet, Mr. Veerraju said that the government has failed in delivering its promise of imposing total prohibition on liquor, more than two-and-a-half years after Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy gave an assurance to that effect during campaigning. Rather, the State government was fleecing the poor by charging exorbitant rates and it was not bothered to set up de-addiction centres. If the government has the will power, it should implement prohibition, the BJP leader said, wondering if the government could manage to run the administration even for a single day without selling liquor.
Mr. Veerraju said that the Central government has every right to seek an explanation about the expenditure incurred by the State on the Polavaram irrigation project as it is funded by the Centre.
Regarding the proposed privatisation of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), Mr. Veerraju said that YSRCP have no moral authority to raise the issue, alleging that the Chief Minister was personally lobbying for the takeover of the plant by South Korean steel major POSCO.
