The ‘Vastunna Meekosam padayatra’ of Telugu Desam Party president and Opposition leader N. Chandrababu Naidu will be countered by the Congress Party in Krishna district through a programme nicknamed ‘kanuvippu’ (eye-opener) led by Vijayawada MP Lagadapati Rajagopal.
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday former MLA Adusumilli Jayaprakash showing the clipping of an interview given to a vernacular newspaper by Mr. Naidu, said that the former Chief Minister had made a volte-face on the issue of the division of the State. In the interview Mr. Naidu had said that Andhra Pradesh would develop only if the state remained undivided. But, in the recent letter to Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde Mr. Naidu had approved the division of the State, Mr Jayaprakash observed.
The growth and progress of the Telugus (their pride) was the foundation on which the Telugu Desam Party was built on by the party founder N.T. Rama Rao, but Mr. Naidu was today demolishing this very foundation, Mr. Jayaprakash said.
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Copy of letter
He also showed to media the copy of a letter written by TDP leader Nandamuri Hari Krishna to party workers in which he quoted the words of his late father N.T. Rama Rao opposing the division of the State.
Mr. Jayaprakash said the ‘kanuvippu’ campaign would be taken out in the villages in which Mr. Naidu would take out his ‘vastunna meekosam padayatra’. “We will tell the people how the division of Andhra Pradesh would affect the farmers of Krishna district. How the youth of Coastal Andhra would lose their jobs and development of the State be adversely affected once Hyderabad, which generated 60 per cent of the State’s revenue was given away,” he said.
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A campaign the Telugu Desam Party should take up was being done by the Congress, Mr. Jayaprakash pointed out.