HYDERABAD:Former Union minister Jairam Ramesh found fault with both Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu for the Centre’s alleged dillydallying approach in implementing the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.
Jairam, who had drafted the AP Reorganisation Bill in consultations with the BJP leadership alleged that Venkaiah was betraying people of his own state on the issue of according special category status to AP.
“Venkaiah Naidu is telling all lies to the people of AP over the prerequisites to get special category status. When Uttarakhand was granted special status without the approval of the National Development Council (NDC), how could Venkaiah say that the special status is not possible for AP?” he questioned while addressing mediapersons here on Friday.
In the same breath, Jairam, who had called on Chandrababu Naidu and held confabulations with him at AP Bhavan in Delhi over Polavaram issue several months ago, charged Naidu with compromising on the interests of the reorganised state by not exerting pressure on the Centre to implement all promises made to the state at the time of bifurcation.
“One Naidu has betrayed AP by not getting the special category status which has been due to the reorganised state and another Naidu is trying to stall the construction of Polavaram Project, included in the AP Reorganisation Act,2014, by taking up Pattiseema project,” he said.
“Venkaiah Naidu had time and again told inside and outside Parliament that his government would extend special category status announced by the UPA government from 5 years to 10 years, but after coming to power he is now saying it is not possible,” he added.
“Polavaram is a ‘A’ project and Pattiseema is ‘B’ project. So, obviously ‘A’ project has to be taken up first and ‘B’ project later. However, Naidu is doing the reverse for reasons best known to him,” he alleged.
“When the AP Reorganisation Bill was being passed in the Parliament, three senior leaders of BJP, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Venkaiah Naidu assured the Parliament that the next government would implement all the promises made in the Reorganisation Act. However, now they are going back on their promises,” he alleged.