Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for providing funds for a new capital Dholera for his home state of Gujarat while providing meagre funding for AP’s new capital of Amravati.
To support his allegations, Mr Naidu played the videos of Mr Modi’s speech regarding the development of Dholera in Gujarat which did not mention Central funding for AP.
BJP national president Amit Shah said recently that Gujarat generates its own funds for its development and does not take Centre’s funds as alleged by Mr Naidu.
Right from the time, the Telugu Desam broke away from the NDA, Mr Naidu has been criticising his former ally, the BJP, making the same allegations from every platform.
He used the party’s plenary Mahanadu too to criticise Mr Modi and Mr Shah instead of listing out his government’s achievemnt.
Speaking on the resolution ‘People’s Capital Amaravati — Happy City’ on the third and concluding day of TDP Mahanadu here on Tuesday, Naidu said Amaravati can generate a lot of revenue for the Centre in the form of income tax, corporate tax, and GST once it is developed into a big and planned city.
“But the Centre is reluctant in helping us build the capital. When they are not giving us funds, why should we pay taxes,” he said.
Naidu said AP too needs a world class capital.
“While Telangana gets most of its income from Hyderabad, Karnataka from Bengaluru, Tamil Nadu from Chennai, why should not AP develop a capital city,” he asked.
Stating that BJP national president Amit Shah’s charge that utilization certificates on funds released for Amaravati were not utilised by TDP government as baseless, Naidu presented eight sets of documents of certificates sent to the Centre and receipts received from the latter on various projects, including Amaravati.
He also played the videos of Mr Modi’s speech, where the PM has shared his plans of a new capital, which would be double the size of New Delhi, which would be built in Dholera in Gujarat.
Naidu said Mr Modi has been diverting funds to Gujarat by ignoring the genuine demands and assurances of the AP Reorga-nisation Act for a new capital.
“Dholera will be bigger in size than Shanghai of China according to the Prime Minister. So, why he is not allowing us to build our capital Amaravati,” he questioned.
On the Tirumala controversy, Mr Naidu said that some people have been trying to rake up new issues by alleging that diamonds went missing in Tirumala.
“This is false propaganda,” he said.
