VIJAYAWADA: Ahead of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s Dharma Poratam public meeting in Tirupati in protest against the Centre on Monday, BJP leaders in the State on Sunday claimed that the TDP was misleading the people of Andhra Pradesh by morphing the videos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches before 2014 elections. They said that PM Modi had never spoken about the issue of special category status (SCS) in his Tirupati public address.
It may be recalled that CM Naidu has chosen Tirupati to show his dissent claiming that PM Modi had promised SCS in the temple city.Following a directive from the party’s central leadership, State BJP leaders addressed press conferences in Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati on Sunday, and said, “TDP is misleading the State and is playing with people’s sentiments by morphing the videos of PM Modi’s public address.
The PM had not spoken over the issue of SCS in Tirupati. He made a reference to the issue at his Nellore meeting. Even there, he did not mention SCS. He said ‘special status ka package’,” MLA Vishnu Kumar Raju claimed in Visakhapatnam, and released a video to the media with original and ‘morphed’ clippings.
Raju clarified that no party that comes to power at the Centre would be able to accord SCS to Andhra Pradesh and advised the parties seeking SCS to stop cheating people.The BJP leaders alleged that the Chief Minister is taking up deekshas for political gains. “The ‘Dharma Porata Deeksha’ by Naidu appears to be ‘Dharmam pai Poratam’ (fight against justice), but not against ‘adharmam’ (injustice).
Even PM Modi had observed a day’s protest. But, he did not spend a single rupee on it. However, Naidu had spent Rs 30 crore on a day-long hunger strike for which he used the entire government’s machinery,” MP Gokaraju Ganga Raju said in Vijayawada.
In Tirupati, MLCs Somu Veerraju and PNV Madhav lashed out at Naidu saying that the TDP chief had severed ties with the BJP only after the Centre started asking for accounts of the funds spent on the Polavaram project. They also alleged that the TDP had colluded with other parties to project BJP as a villain in the State.