It’s official: Andhra Pradesh CM to meet Modi

Amaravati: Clearing confusion over the date of appointment, the Prime Minister’s Office fixed Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s rendezvous with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 10.40 am on Friday where the AP leader is expected raise financial and non-financial issues pertaining to the state.

For the last couple of days, the date on which Naidu would meet the Prime Minister kept changing. Once it was said that the meeting would take place on January 12 then it was changed to Jan 17 and now again the PMO gave clearance for the meeting on Friday.

Naidu has been waiting for the meeting to happen for more than a year since he has list as long as his arm to place before the Prime Minister, including keeping the promises made under special package, funds for Polavaram and Amaravati.

After the finalisation of the date, the officials have gone into a huddle to prepare the memorandum detailing with what the state expects from the Centre. The demands that would be raised before the Prime Minister would include the promise made for creation of Railway zone with headquarters at Visakhapatnam, central institutions which had been promised in the AP State Reorganisation Act, 2014, and sanction of over Rs 16,000 crore as grant for funding several projects in lieu of loans from external agencies for taking up projects in the state.

As there is tremendous pressure on him to accommodate the turncoats that had joined the Telugu Desam Party after breaking ranks with YSRC chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, Naidu is also preparing to broach the promise made in the bifurcation that number of assembly seats would be increased in the state.

This meeting will be a follow up for the earlier meeting of TDP MPs and Ministers with Narendra Modi, said Parakala Prabhakar, Communication Advisor to Chief Minister, in reply to a query at news conference. He hoped that all the problems would be resolved at the meeting. Parakala, dismissed as media creation, that relations between the BJP and the TDP were coming under strain and pointed out that the meeting had nothing political about it. The talks at government- to- government level, with the CM making a request for sanction of what is due to the state as promised by the Centre and the bifurcation Act.