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Shah blatantly lying: Chandrababu Naidu
Cut to the quick by the incisive comments of BJP president Amit Shah on Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday questioned as to why the state should pay taxes to the Centre when it does not help the state in anyway including building the capital city.
Vijayawada: Cut to the quick by the incisive comments of BJP president Amit Shah on Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday questioned as to why the state should pay taxes to the Centre when it does not help the state in anyway including building the capital city.
Speaking on the resolution on Amaravati on the third and final day of Mahanadu here, the Chief Minister termed Amit Shah’s observations as a tissue of white lies. "Shah says the Centre has gone out of the way in helping the state to build the capital. What all the Centre had given was a paltry Rs 2,500 crore”, Naidu said.
With Shah touching Naidu’s raw nerve by making “derisive” comments on Amaravati which is very close to his heart, Naidu continued his scathing attack on the BJP chief for the second day on Wednesday, wanting to know how the Centre could say it helped the state in building Amaravati when it did not even give as much money as it had committed itself to world’s tallest 182-meter-high statue of Sardar Vallabhai Patel in Gujarat.
At one stage, Naidu lost his composure and warned the Centre of consequences if it continued its game-plan of discrediting Amaravati project and slinging mud on the TDP regime in the state.
The TDP supremo raised the construction of smart city Dholera in Gujarat and pointed out that the Centre was investing Rs 95,000 crore on developing the port city. “You do not pay us a penny and on the contrary, you divert the funds of the nation to Gujarat. Do you call this spirit of cooperative federalism”, he asked?
He said the Centre should hang its head in shame as even children donated the money they had saved in kiddy banks and farmers voluntarily donated their lands for the Amaravati project.
Andhras who have settled abroad are willing to donate substantial funds. “We will develop the land the farmers had donated and from the proceeds of selling 5,000 acres we will begin the construction of the capital”, Naidu said and cautioned the Delhi leadership to realise that the people were watching how it was conspiring against the capital city. He also took a potshot at Kanna Lakshminarayana, who took over as the president of BJP state unit, saying that one who was about to join the YSRC was now made the chief of the saffron party.
Now he has transformed into an official mouthpiece of BJP and an unofficial one for the YSRC, he said. Naidu suspected Shah was in fact blackmailing the state government by putting the Amaravati project under scanner and keeping on hold all clearances. Recalling Foster + Partners appreciating the plans for Amaravati, Naidu said that there would be no competition to Amaravati except Amaravati itself.
