State has made no progress for past 3 yrs: Ramakrishna

Visakhapatnam: The Ministers and MLAs in the State have no powers, alleged CPI State secretary K Ramakrishna.

Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, he said it was surprising that Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had spoken on the need for the YSRCP to win all 175 seats in the state at a recent workshop.

He wondered why the Chief Minister was worried about the number of seats his party has to win when he was sure that people were happy with the welfare schemes.

Ramakrishna criticised Jagan Mohan Reddy for taking unilateral decisions on important issues. The CPI state secretary questioned what the YSRCP government has done in the past three years for the state. He said there has been no progress in the fields of irrigation, IT, industries, agriculture and infrastructure.

He also found fault with the ruling party for making contradictory statements on the multipurpose Polavaram project. While the Chief Minister had announced in the Assembly that the Polavaram project would be completed soon, Irrigation Minister Ambati Rambabu recently said that they could not specify any time by which the project would be completed. Ramakrishna said the Ministers in the State have no awareness on their own departments.

Ramakrishna felt the state debt would reach Rs 10 lakh crore by the end of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy's tenure and as of now, the total debts were Rs 8 lakh crore. He said the State government entered into an agreement to buy solar power at a cost of Rs 2.49 per unit when the unit rate in the open market was just Rs 1.99.

He said the solar power agreement would be in force for 25 years, which would put a burden of Rs 22,500 crore on the State. The CPI State secretary said it was a shame on the AP government that Konaseema farmers declared a crop holiday. The farmers had decided to observe a crop holiday in the kharif season as the farm lands were not properly irrigated, lack of repair works of the canals and government not clearing dues to farmers.

Referring to the SSC results, Ramakrishna said that the government was responsible for the failure of over 2 lakh students in the State.

He said the education sector in the State should be revamped completely. He said the government has totally destroyed the higher education system.

Further, Ramakrishna alleged that Vice-Chancellors in the universities were acting as dictators and agents of the YSRCP. He opined that the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy's government in the State could not function for a month without the cooperation of the Union government.

He said there was deep dissatisfaction among the people over the YSRCP government and it was better for all political parties to think about launching a united movement rather than working for elections in the current circumstances.

CPI state assistant secretary J V Satyanarayana Murthy and CPI district secretary M Pydiraju were present.