NEW DELHI: YSR Congress chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is set to become the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh after his party’s huge win in the Assembly polls, renewed his demand for special category status for his state in his meeting with Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi on Sunday.
But the Andhra CM-designate admitted that since the NDA has an overwhelming majority, he can only make a request to Modi and not “demand” the implementation of his party’s main poll plank.
“It would have been wonderful if the NDA had got 250 Lok Sabha seats, but they bagged 353 seats. Now the NDA doesn’t need our support,” Jagan said.
Saying the state is in dire financial straits with debt swelling to Rs 2.58 lakh crore from Rs 97,000 crore in 2014, Jagan said he asked the PM-elect to be magnanimous to the state.
Modi warmly invited Jagan, with whom he is known to share a good rapport.
The Andhra CM-designate said Modi listened to his submissions patiently. Incidentally, the Centre maintains that the 14th Finance Commission did away with special category status to states as they are now getting a higher share in the revenue.
Jagan also said he will order probes to unearth scams in building the new state capital Amaravati and into other schemes launched by former CM Chandrababu Naidu.
‘Willing to remind Modi 40-50 times about it’
Jagan said he would meet Modi 40-50 times in the next five years and remind him each time about special status for Andhra.