VIJAYAWADA: The political slugfest over Central assistance to the Polavaram Project continued on Tuesday with BJP MP and national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao calling the TDP a party of “liars” and tweeting the Polavaram Project Authority’s (PPA) response to an RTI query that there were no dues to be cleared by the Centre towards funds spent by the State government. He also demanded an apology from Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for “spreading lies”.
The development comes a day after Naidu dashed off a letter to the Centre demanding release of `10,000 crore for the Polavaram Project.“TDP is a party of liars. Latest to join is Devineni Uma who shamelessly lied that the Centre has to pay Rs.1935 crores as dues towards Polavaram project. Here is proof (Q.6 reply) that Centre has no dues as of date. CM @ncbn must apologize for spreading lies after falsely claiming credit (sic).,” the BJP MP tweeted on Tuesday.
The sixth question of the RTI query filed by Saurabh MK Hamar was whether any bill was pending to be paid by NABARD or the Central government. To this, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of PPA, G Rambabu, replied, “No bills are pending to be paid by NABARD or Central Government.” To a question on whether any utilisation certificates were yet to be submitted by the State government, the CPIO answered, “Utilisation Certificate for the year 2018-19 for an amount of `1,385 crore is to be submitted by the government of Andhra Pradesh.”
Earlier in the day, BJP Mahila Morcha in-charge Daggubati Purandeswari took on the State government for claiming that the Centre owed `1,935 crore towards reimbursement of funds spent on the Polavaram Project, asking how it could be done if the TDP government had not yet sent bills to the departments concerned.
Purandeswari told reporters, “The State has not submitted the bills to the Centre. The expenditure bills are submitted to the Polavaram Project Authority as per due procedure. After PPA vets them, they will be sent to the Centre, which will release funds,” she said.
“This was informed to us by PPA officials in the presence of State Water Resources Department engineer-in-chief M Venkateswara Rao,” BJP Mahila Morcha in-charge Daggubati Purandeswari added and accused the State government of not having any clarity on the extent of land to be acquired for the national project.
“When I met Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari, he said that the Centre would extend all the required financial support if the State government comes with the specifics of land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement (LARR) such as the number of families that would be affected and funds required for the same. The State does not seem to have done that so far as it doesn’t have clarity on the issue,’’ she said.
Annam joins BJP
Annam Srinivasa Rao from Chilkaluripet, who served as the organising secretary of Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee, joined the BJP along with 70 of his followers. BJP state president Kanna Lakshminarayana welcomed them. Speaking on the occasion, Kanna attacked the TDP government for increasing the cost of the Polavaram project irrationally.“No contractor has the right to revise the estimates of a project. But the State government has escalated the cost of the project without any scientific basis,” he said. He also criticised the TDP for erecting its party flags at the Polavaram project site.