The YSRCP and the BJP are responsible for non-implementation of the assurances given to the State in Parliament at the time of bifurcation, senior TDP leader Panabaka Lakshmi has alleged.
Speaking after filing two sets of nomination papers before Nellore District Collector K.V.N. Chakradhar Babu, the Returning Officer for the Tirupati Lok Sabha by-election, here on Wednesday, Ms. Lakshmi recalled that it was in Tirupati, in the run-up to the 2014 elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised Special Category Status (SCS) for not five years but 15 years.
Dig at PM
After coming to power, the Prime Minister had meted out a raw deal to the State, she alleged.
Ms. Lakshmi, who came in a procession after paying floral tributes to the statue of B.R. Ambedkar, said the YSRCP had won in the 2019 elections as it promised to secure SCS.
“What has happened to the promise on SCS? Despite the people electing 22 YSRCP MPs, the party did little to achieve SCS,” she said, and added that it was the TDP MPs, including K. Rammohan Naidu, who had taken up the State’s case forcefully in Parliament.
VSP row
‘The YSRCP is answerable to the people on the Centre’s decision to privatise the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant after several rounds of negotiations with the State government,” she said while campaigning in the Sarvepalli Assembly segment.
Among others, former Minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy accompanied her.
Social justice was at peril as the reservation for the SCs/STs would become irrelevant in the wake of the PSU privatisation spree, she said.
The BJP and the YSRCP had no moral right to seek votes as they had turned a blind eye to major infrastructure projects such as Dugarajapatnam port and Mannavaram NTPC BHEL power project, she said.
TDP State president and MLA K. Atchannaidu contended that the YSRCP had won the panchayat and municipal elections by resorting to “gross misuse of official machinery.”
Senior TDP leaders Devineni Umamaheswara Rao and Yanamala Ramakrishnudu took part in the campaign.
