VIJAYAWADA
Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Monday and discussed various issues, mainly the implementation of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, the Polavaram project and the Special Category Status (SCS).
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy requested the Prime Minister to confer SCS as per the assurance given to A.P. at the time of bifurcation. He insisted that SCS would facilitate various grants and tax incentives that would give a fillip to industrialisation and employment generation.
He appealed to Mr. Modi to approve the Polavaram project’s revised estimate of Rs.55,549 crore as per the Technical Advisory Committee’s recommendation, and to provide a sum of Rs.10,000 crore on an ad-hoc basis to enable the State to expedite the multi-purpose project. Besides, the Chief Minister wanted Rs.2,900 crore spent by the State to be reimbursed at the earliest.
More importantly, Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy asked Mr. Modi to do away with component-wise reimbursement and to instead take the whole project (Polavaram) into account like it is done in the case of all national projects in order to pay back the expenditure incurred by the State within 15 days of completion of works.
Further, he sought the release of Rs.32,626 crore towards the resource gap, and Mr. Modi’s intervention to make the Telangana DISCOMs pay their debt to the A.P. power utilities amounting to Rs.6,756 crore that was pending for the last eight years, so that the cash-starved A.P. DISCOMs could clear their outstanding payments to generators.
Iron ore
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy went on to seek the allotment of iron ore to the AP Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC) to pave the way for the establishment of the proposed integrated steel plant in Kadapa district. Also, he made a request for allotment of beach sand mines to the APMDC at 14 places to enable the State to explore an investment potential of Rs.20,000 crore.
He requested the sanction for 12 new medical colleges. The Centre has already accorded clearances for three new colleges. There are 11 medical colleges in the State now. The target is to have a medical college in each of the 26 districts.
Ration
The Chief Minister explained to Mr. Modi that due to the lack of rationalisation in the selection of eligible persons under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), A.P. was suffering a big loss as a large number of needy and deserving persons were rendered ineligible.
He said that the State government was providing the ration to 2.68 crore beneficiaries, of whom 61% belonged to villages and 41% urban areas whereas as per the NFSA, 75% of the people in rural areas and 50% in cities / towns should get the benefit under the PDS.
States like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat, which were economically better than A.P., had almost 10% more beneficiaries than A.P., due to which the State government was providing ration to the leftover 56 lakh eligible beneficiaries shouldering an additional burden of Rs.5,528 crore.
The NITI Aayog had already informed the Central government about revising the data and apprised the Prime Minister of the need to examine the allocations made to A.P.
