Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly and president of YSR Congress, has called upon students and intellectuals to join hands for achieving special category status as Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, fearing possible CBI inquiry into his corrupt practices, has surrendered to the Centre’s diktats.
Moreover, the Chief Minster had been painting a rosy picture on development and growth rate, while the socio-economic survey was contrary to his claim, he said while addressing students of various professional colleges and intellectuals at ‘Yuva Bheri’ here on Monday.
Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy said that the Chief Minister’s inflated figures on the State GDP (12.20 per cent against the national average or 7.20 per cent). “They are a bundle of lies and misleading. To substantiate his claim, quoting socio-economic survey report, he said that the State had attracted Rs. 9, 099 crore investments between 2014-15 and 2015-16 against the tall claim of signing MoUs for Rs. 4.67lakh crores at Partnership Summit in Visakhapatnam. Even the farm loans which were Rs. 87,612 crore by kharif-2014 touched Rs. 1.07 lakh crore as on June 30 this year and there was not an iota of progress in the IT sector.
He also flayed Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley for going back on their demand in Parliament for special status for 10 years to the State. He even presented video clippings of Mr. Venkaiah Naidu’s demand in Parliament.
Vemali Satyanarayana, former Vice-Chancellor of Law University, P. Srinivasa Subba Rao, Registrar of S.S. University, Cuttack (Odisha), and other academicians felt that special status was needed for rapid development of the State.
Later, in a question and answer session, students supported Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy on SCS and criticised the Chief Minister for not accomplishing all poll-eve promises.
While Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy shared dais with professors, advocates and other intellectuals, the party functionaries, including MLAs and MLCs, sat in a closed enclave in front of the dais. No party man was invited to address the gathering.
