VIJAYAWADA: The opposition TDP has called for statewide bundh on Monday in protest of party president and former Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu’s arrest by the Crime Investigation Department (CID) in the alleged skill development scam.
Also See: Chandrababu Naidu Arrest Live
The Janasena has extended support to TDP's bandh call. Pawan Kalyan called upon the Janasena cadres to peacefully participate in the bandh in solidarity to Naidu.
The TDP has alleged that the CID is creating a scam out of nothing and trying to implicate Naidu in it. The official spokesperson of TDP, Dhulipalla Narendra said that the skill development project was implemented on the lines of Gujarat model where it has already been implemented. As many as 213000 students trained under the program and 75,000 of them have got job placements, he said.
The entire case of the CID is based on the GST evasion by one of the technology partners Designtech. The case was pertaining to the fake invoices created by some individuals in those companies and Andhra Pradesh government has nothing to do with it.
The MoU with the technology partners was also on the same lines of Gujarat model where the same companies implemented the project earlier. As part of the agreement, Siemens supplied its proprietary software at 95% to 97% discount and Rs 70 crore has been spent from the state government funds for the same.
While Rs 40 crore was paid towards GST, the balance amount in Rs 371 crore has been spent on 6 centres of excellence and 35 eSTDIs for training 213000. The per student cost turns out to be Rs 12300 which is far lesser than the market cost for similar Siemens trainings and there is no scope for misappropriation of funds on the part of state government or its officials including the chief minister, said Narendra. However, the CID is trying to shift the blame on Naidu with hypothetical assumptions that the money laundered by private firms to evade GST was routed to Naidu without any basis and support by an iota of evidence.
Narendra said that the chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy who is having several CBI and ED cases against him is trying to tarnish the image of Naidu by foisting false cases. He said that it is a defeat for democracy and all right-thinking people should support TDP in its fight for justice, appealed Narendra.
