Municipal Administration Minister Botcha Satyanarayana on Wednesday accused TDP national president N. Chandrababu Naidu of indulging in false propaganda that the G.N. Rao Committee and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) did not favour development of Visakhapatnam as the Executive capital citing its vulnerability to cyclones.
After initially questioning the credentials of the expert committees, Mr. Naidu seemed to taking their reports seriously, the Minister observed, and wondered how Mumbai and Chennai, located close to the sea, were flourishing as the capital cities of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Decentralisation of administration could only be delayed, but not stopped entirely, Mr. Satyanarayana told the media at the party central office at Tadepalli.
Mr. Naidu was known for taking U-turns and would never take a clear stand on issues, the Minister observed.
He flayed the TDP, the JSP, and a section of the media for saying that Visakhapatnam was not safe.
He asserted that the YSRCP government had taken the decision to decentralise administration and development after the high-power committee did a thorough analysis of the recommendations of the G.N. Rao Committee and the BCG. In contrast, the TDP Government had ignored the findings of the Sivaramakrishnan Committee constituted by the Central government, he alleged.
Council abolition
On the abolition of Legislative Council, Mr. Satyanarayana said that Mr. Naidu had in the past demanded that it be scrapped. “When the YSRCP government wanted to scrap the Upper House, he raised a hue and cry for political reasons,” the Minister said.
He blamed Mr. Naidu for the financial woes of the State, and reiterated that decentralisation was well on course in tune with Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s commitment to the development of all regions.
Replying to a question on land pooling in Visakhapatnam, the Minister said it was for the construction of about 1.76 lakh houses for the poor.
