The newly carved out State of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh present a contrasting picture a year after the momentous split.
While the Telangana government has lined up a series of programmes to commemorate the first anniversary of the State formed after a decades-long struggle, the mood is certainly not celebratory in Andhra Pradesh.
Its Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has said more than once that the bifurcation was carried out against the wishes of the people of the Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, indicating that the formation of the new State was not a cause for celebration.
The crux of the division being Hyderabad and the maximum revenue generator going to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh is left to fend for itself.
A bleak financial scenario is what Andhra Pradesh is facing at a time when Telangana State has registered a revenue surplus for the second consecutive year.
In the 2014-15 and 2015-16 budgets presented by the new governments, Telangana had recorded revenue surplus of Rs. 301 crore and Rs. 531 crore, while Andhra Pradesh reported revenue deficits of Rs. 6,064 crore and Rs. 7,300 crore respectively.
This apart, Telanagana has a ready-made metropolis as its capital. AP, which has scarce resources at present, has to build the new capital from scratch. The much-awaited Centre’s help in this regard remains a distant dream.
AP has been repeatedly pressing the Centre to honour the commitment for a liberal financial assistance to help the new State to cope with its needs. Mr. Naidu has been maintaining that the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, had declared on the floor of Parliament that the entire budgetary deficit of the State in the first year of its formation would be borne by the Centre.
