Union finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman read out her budget speech in Lok Sabha for a record period of two hours and 40 minutes on Saturday, making tall claims and big promises to various sections of people.
But strange as it might sound, in the entire budget speech, Nirmala did not mention the words – “Andhra Pradesh or Telangana” even once, much to the disappointment of Telugu people in both the states and also the both the governments.
It never happened before, as the budget speech used to have at least one reference to the Telugu states, whether it was about an ongoing railway project or establishment of a national institute or a highway expansion or the launch of a welfare scheme.
In case of Telangana, the finance minister was completely silent about the mega projects like Kaleshwaram or Mission Bhagiratha or expansion of MMTS train services or any other scheme. She also did not make a mention of even a tourism project in Telangana.
Ironically, the Economic Survey Report presented by Nirmala on Friday was all praise for Telangana government’s flagship programme – Rythu Bandhu, an investment support scheme for farmers of the State.
She said it had immensely benefitted the farmers of the state and several other states, besides the Centre, have been implementing the same schemes, the report said.
In case of Andhra, too, Nirmala has not made any mention of Centrally-funded schemes like Polavaram, funding for capital, projects like Visakhapatnam Petro-Chemical Corridor etc, forget about central support to the state government’s welfare schemes like village secretariats, Amma Vodi etc, not to talk about special category status to Andhra Pradesh.
May be, the BJP government thought there is no point in pampering the people of Telugu states which have no elections in the near future.
