Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader Y. Satyanarayana Chowdary, better known as Sujana Chowdary, has exuded confidence that the Central government would accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh during the current financial year itself.
Mr. Chowdary said that the Centre was awaiting proposals from the State in this regard and the State would get the benefits under the special category status once the report was submitted to the Union government. The State government was also engaged in preparing a blueprint of the capital city to be located around Vijayawada and it would be placed in the public domain soon for suggestions from the people.
“Development of capital for the new State is not an isolated issue. The government is committed to ensuring uniform development across the 13 districts and efforts are on to take views of the people on finalising the capital,” he said. Mr. Chowdary was briefing reporters after a first-of-its kind meeting of the MPs of TDP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held here on Saturday.
The more than three-and-a-half hour meeting discussed about 45 issues of immediate importance to the State, including the special category status, construction of new capital, pending issues in the rail and road sectors, industrial development and social sector priorities. Interestingly, two YSR Congress MPs — S.P.Y. Reddy (Nandyal) and Kothapalli Geeta (Araku) — too attended the meeting.
The two MPs had reportedly made up their mind to sail with the TDP and had been keeping away from the YSRC’s affairs for quite some time now. “I have come here to discuss about the problems in my constituency. I had decided to keep away from the YSR Congress,” Ms. Geeta told reporters.
The meeting, Mr. Chowdary said, could be described as a new trend as it was for the first time the MPs from the State were coming together to discuss the pending issues pertaining to the State when Parliament was not in session.
Follow-up actionThe meeting had been convened to make sure that there was an effective follow-up action on the State’s issues at the Central level wherein the MPs could be trained on how to take up pending issues with the Ministries concerned. “Similar meetings would be held once a month at different places forthwith,” he said.
BJP MP K. Haribabu said the meeting had resolved to constitute teams of MPs each entrusted with issues related to specific Ministries so as to pursue the progress of works in a time-bound manner. It was also decided to impress upon the State and Central Governments to invite MPs for designing plans of development of respective regions.
