A couple of days after the Union home ministry revising its agenda removing the references to special category status to Andhra Pradesh, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajya Sabha member G V L Narasimha Rao came out with a statement that it was done after he wrote a letter to the ministry.
GVL told reporters that the issues of special category status to Andhra Pradesh and revenue deficit reimbursement to the state were wrongly mentioned in the agenda, as they had nothing to do with the inter-state issues to be discussed at the three-member committee meeting.
“It was a clerical mistake done by the junior level officers. After seeing the items included in the agenda, I wrote to the Union home ministry as to how the special category status issue and three other points were included in the agenda. It was only after my letter that the ministry had revised the agenda,” the BJP MP said.
He argued that had the issue been included in the agenda, it would have caused long-term loss to the state.
“It was because of my initiative that the special category issue was removed, so that it would not make the agenda more complex,” he said.
GVL reiterated that the special category status issue was a closed chapter and everybody should understand it.
“There is no need to politicise a non-issue which was arisen due to the mistakes committed by junior level officials,” he added.
A couple of days ago, an agenda note of the meeting of the three-member committee to discuss the bifurcation issues concerning the two Telugu states was leaked to the media.
The special category status and the revenue deficit of Andhra Pradesh were part of the nine-point agenda circulated among the two Telugu states on Saturday morning.
This led to the talk that the Central government is positively responding to the long-pending demand of the special category status to AP.
But by evening, the two issues pertaining to Andhra Pradesh were removed from the agenda and a fresh note was circulated to the Telugu states, leading to huge disappointment among the YSRC.
YSRC spokesman and MLA Ambati Rambabu issued a statement saying the special category issue was removed after the two MPs – Sujana Chowdary and C M Ramesh, who defected to BJP from TDP, brought pressure on the home ministry.
He alleged that TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu had not issued a statement welcoming the inclusion of special category status issue in the agenda itself showed that he was not happy with the Centre’s decision.
“He might have definitely influenced his stooges Sujana Chowdary and C M Ramesh to bring pressure on the home ministry to remove the items from the agenda, as it would fetch huge mileage to YSRC and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy,” he said.
