Students protest meager allocation in budget

Vijayawada: Members of the YSR Student Union (YSRSU) staged a protest at Lenin Centre here on Friday, condemning the state government’s “injustice” meted out in the recent budget. The recently announced Andhra Pradesh state budget had ignored the students, alleged YSRSU district president D Anji Reddy.

Speaking on the occasion, Anji Reddy said that year after year the government was minimising the allocation of funds to the students. He charged the TDP with giving false promises to come to power. While the allocation of funds in 2015-16 was 16.84 percent, in 2016-17 it was 14.44 percent followed by 13.84 percent in 2017-18. In the present budget, the allocation was a meagre 12.89 percent, he criticised.

He said the government had failed to fulfill all the promises made to the people of AP like one job for each household, Rs 2,000 dole, student fee reimbursement, distribution of cycles to Intermediate students, laptops to engineering students and free bus pass to students from Class I to Class X. He alleged that the government was hand in glove with private corporate institutions like Narayana and Chaitanya. He said that the TDP government had utterly failed in fulfilling the promises given to the students.

Reddy said the government had failed to get Special Category Status to AP in the last four years and was trying to fool the people on the issue. He said that YSRSU strongly condemned the anti-student policy adopted by the ruling TDP government. YSRSU city president T Rajesh, city secretary Ismail, Shyam Chandu, Ashok and others were present.