VIJAYAWADA: The ruling and Opposition parties traded barbs over ‘sand scarcity’ and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan’s ‘long march’ on Sunday.
Senior TDP leader Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy wondered how can a government, which failed to resolve a minor issue like sand crisis, could be expected to lead the State on the path of development. “Because of the insipid government and its ineffective administration, lakhs of workers in construction sector are suffering,” he tweeted.
Another TDP leader Devineni Umamaheswara Rao sought to know why the State is facing the sand crisis when the neighbouring States are not facing any such crisis. He questioned the silence of the government on the issue.
Countering the charges of the Opposition, YSRC leaders replied in the same tone and even dared them to prove how the sand is to be extracted from the flooded sand reaches. Endowments Minister Vellamapalle Srinivas along with party MLA Malladi Vishnu visited Prakasam Barrage and showing the flowing river, said that they could not excavate sand from the sand reaches as there is a flood in the river for the past 70 days.
“Today, Pawan Kalyan is acting at the behest of Naidu, who was behind the sand robbery in the State all these days. Now with his hands tied, he is making others make an issue out of nothing. Pawan was rejected by people, but he fails to learn a lesson,” he said.