Pouring cold water on the grand capital plans of Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, the Centre has said it would provide financial assistance for the construction of only certain government buildings as it does not have money to spare for all the new buildings.
Dejected government officials now say the funds from the Centre may not exceed Rs 5,000 crore, most of which would be used up for the construction of a new Raj Bhavan, assembly, secretariat and high court.
"The Centre has provisionally agreed to give money only for a few important buildings. We have estimated that it would be around Rs 5,000 crore," said a senior official. This projection falls way short of the massive indent of Rs 1.35 lakh crore that was submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier.
Citing section 94 (3) of the AP Reorganisation Act - 2014, the Centre has also made it clear that it has no obligation towards land acquisition. In the backdrop of skyrocketing land prices in and around Vijayawada, acquiring land to set up government buildings would be a costly affair and the Centre has absolved itself from this burden, sources said.
The AP government had identified as many as 128 government buildings belonging to 33 departments that are presently working from Hyderabad, and need to be relocated to Andhra Pradesh. However, there was no mention of these buildings and the cost involved to shift them in the Centre's communique.
Officials in the roads and buildings (R&B) department estimated that more than Rs 1 lakh crore would be required to build new buildings, that too without taking the cost for land acquisition into consideration.
"Our hopes of getting a huge financial grant from the Centre, both for capital construction and decentralized development, did not get support. They may give meagre funds, that too in two or three phases," said a government source.
An upset Naidu has now asked the finance department to explore new avenues for getting external funding. He also instructed the resource mobilization committee, headed by Rajya Sabha MP YS Choudhary, to lure domestic financial institutions to provide soft loans for the construction of the capital.
To attract private investments, the AP government is now proposing different projects, which are actually part of the capital construction project. For example, construction of an outer ring road around Vijayawada-Guntur-Tenali-Mangalagiri (VGTM) area could be proposed for private investment under PPP mode. Similarly, development of a telecom network and expanded bandwidth projects would be offered for private participation.
Meanwhile, the AP government is preparing proposals for expansion of the road network and streetlighting, for which it is expecting funds under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu is also said to have assured the chief minister that his ministry would extend the maximum help needed to take up civic infrastructure development in 13 districts.
Under the "power for all" scheme, AP is expecting another Rs 15,000 crore to take up power supply improvement projects. "Except for a few central-sponsored projects, AP would get very little against big promises made during the election campaign. By increasing our external borrowings, we may end up paying more interest, which would add up to the already piled up revenue deficit," said a finance department official.
Source: TimesOfIndia
