Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is good at putting up big shows at the cost of public money, but when it comes to spending on developmental and welfare schemes, he puts up a poor face.
It was only last week that Naidu government had spent over Rs 25 crore on conducting National Women’s Parliament, which has no public purpose or any major objective.
It was a sheer waste of public money only to decorate Vijayawada and Amaravati and erecting huge settings at the venue, where the speakers focussed only on praising Naidu.
Not just this, Naidu also wasted a lot of money in the name of Visakha Utsav in Visakhapatnam, publicity arrangements for Krishna Pushkaraalu and then going on foreign tours in the name of mobilising investments.
Now, the latest information from the state government is that there is absolutely no money in the state exchequer to complete any of the developmental works or implementing welfare schemes.
The chief minister is learnt to have asked the officials to stop payments to all the pending works and see that salaries to the government staff are not stopped.
He knows that if salaries are denied, there will be a lot of hue and cry and that will reflect the sorry state of the state finances.
With demonetisation already hitting the revenue inflows by more than 30 per cent, the state exchequer is virtually empty. Yet, Naidu does not hesitate to spend on meaningless programmes!
