‘Come back to Andhra’

Vijayawada : A review meeting on industries in Andhra Pradesh revealed certain interesting facts. The officials who were silent till now have opened up and told Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu that the land pooling for industrial needs were allegedly diverted for other purposes during the YSRCP regime, which included setting aside 1,382 acres of land for welfare house sites. They said that this kind of discouraging developments have dampened the spirit of investors.

In another interesting development, CPI national secretary K Narayana, state secretary Ramakrishna and others met Naidu in the Secretariat and urged him to see that all those who grabbed land in Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Prakasam districts in the name of three capitals should be punished and land be reclaimed.

Naidu exhorted that there is an urgent need to instill confidence among the industrialists. He asked the officials to reach out to the industrialists and investors who had forged agreements with the state but later abandoned them due to alleged mishandling by the erstwhile YSRCP government.

The Chief Minister said, "Negotiate with the industrialists who turned their backs on the state even after forging agreements with it due to the policies of the YSRCP government. If needed, I will personally talk to them.”

According to the CM, the erstwhile TDP government between 2014 and 2019 had signed agreements worth Rs 16 lakh crore and alleged that the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government had later driven them away with its policies.

Naidu underscored that 14,125 acres of land was made available through 64 industrial parks between 2014 and 2019 and observed that only 31 such parks were made available by the YSRCP government.

Instructing the officials to speed up work in the projects which have already taken off, the CM called for the completion of projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore by the end of the year to enable the employment of over 1.3 lakh people.

Further, the CM directed the officials to come up with five new policies on industries, MSMEs, food processing, electronics, IT and cloud and textiles within the next 100 days.

He told them that the policies should be good enough to attract investments with a conducive environment.

He further asked the officials to design policies to turn the southern state into a green hydrogen and green energy hub. Similarly, he called for the drafting of proposals to create four new industrial clusters and procure Central government approvals, adding that the clusters could come up at Kuppam, Mulapeta, Chilamathuru and Donakonda or Pamuru.

Naidu also deliberated on the Rs 11,542-crore bulk drug park at Nakkapalli, Rs 60,000 crore NTPC green hydrogen hub and others.