The long-pending demand for grant of Special Category Status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh by the Centre is not a closed chapter, SCS Sadana Samiti president Chalasani Srinivas said.
Leading a meeting here on Tuesday to launch a protracted struggle, he exhorted all parties, including the YSRCP and the Telugu Desam Party, to sink their differences and come for a united struggle to achieve SCS.
The YSRCP, which came to power promising to strive for SCS for the State if people gave them maximum number of MP seats during 2019 Lok Sabha elections, now remains silent, he charged.
He said it was unfathomable as to why the TDP and JSP had also failed to take the BJP head-on. All these parties were equally responsible for Prakasam district remaining the most backward till date, he felt.
Communist Party of India(CPI) State Secretary K. Ramakrishna said the YSRCP government was implementing the BJP’s agenda in the State without even questioning it about the assurances made to the State, including setting up of a sea port at Ramayapatnam and steel plant at Kadapa, at the time of bifurcation. Even worse was the Centre’s stand to privatise Visakhapatnam Steel plant, he lamented.
CPI(Marxist) State Secretary V. Srinivasa Rao alleged that the Centre, which had promised ₹2,000 crore for developing the capital at Amaravati, had earmarked only a nominal amount of ₹5 lakh for the purpose in the Union Budget.
The State that struggled to cope with revenue deficit after bifurcation had not been provided hand-holding by the Centre either, he alleged.
Though the Centre had announced setting up of a railway zone in Andhra Pradesh in 2019 itself, it had not allotted funds for it even in the recent Union budget, CPI(ML) New Democracy leader Ch. Venkateswarlu said.
The Bundelkhand-like economic special package promised to four Rayalaseema and three north coastal Andhra districts had also not been implemented at a time when people of Prakasam district pressed for extending the package to the backward district, he added.
Similar meetings would be organised in Tirupati on March 21 and Rajamahendravaram on 23 to press for justice to the state after the “unjustified” bifurcation, said CPM East Prakasam District Secretary P. Anjaneyulu.
