New Delhi : Senior Congress leader and former union minister Jairam Ramesh accuses Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of betraying the Andhra Pradesh people over the special category status promised during the Congress rule when the state was bifurcated to create a separate Telengana.
In an interview with IANS, the newly-elected Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka recalled how the then Congress government wanted the special category status, which involved huge financial packages, to be extended to Andhra Pradesh as compensation for five years. The BJP, which was in opposition then, agreed, but went a step ahead promising it will extend the status to 10 years if it came to power, reports IANS.
The promise was made by M. Venkaiah Naidu, a former Bharatiya Janata Party President from Andhra Pradesh and now the minister of housing and urban poverty alleviation in the Modi-led government, Ramesh said. “We were committed to the special category status for five years. Naidu said it will be for 10 years. Finally, they have not implemented it at all. This government has abolished it,” the Congress leader said. “In the light of what Naidu said on February 20, 2014 (in the Rajya Sabha), it is a betrayal to the people of Andhra.”
The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, authored by Ramesh, was notified in the Gazette of India on March 1 of that year and the new Telangana government took office on June 2, 2014. People in Andhra Pradesh, overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of the bifurcation, were promised special central government help to compensate for the losses the state suffered because all industrial and commercial development was concentrated around the capital Hyderabad that geographically belonged to the new Telangana state.
But nothing has happened on that front more than two years after the BJP came to power at the head of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, of which Andhra Pradesh’s ruling Telegu Desam Party (TDP) is a constituent.
