Babu ups the ante against Modi govt

Amaravati: After embarrassing NDA to no end by moving a no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha on last Friday, TDP president and Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu is not sitting on his oars but is getting ready to continue the heat on BJP with yet another edition of Dharma Porata Deeksha at Ongole in Prakasam district on July 28.

Though the TDP leaders are organising a number of agitations in different forms, it is in Dharma Porata Deekshas that Chandrababu Naidu is participating, calling the BJP to account for its omissions and commissions on the assurances made to the State at the time of bifurcation in 2014.

The Ongole protest would be the fourth in the series of Dharma Porata Deekshas. Naidu is expected to go full blast at the BJP once again at this meeting, in an attempt to isolate the party in Andhra Pradesh and at the time same time to unite and rally people behind him, thus check-mating his political adversary YS Jagan Mohan Reddy who is on padayatra in coastal districts.

The deeksha is taking place in the back drop of the BJP sticking to its guns that it would not deliver Special Category Status, come what may, to the state. Naidu will be stressing the point to explain to the people how the BJP had led the people up the garden path with half-truths and outright falsehoods on its commitment to the state.

According to party sources, Naidu is expected to dwell on how the Prime Minister and Central ministers had misled Parliament with their statements that they had fulfilled 90 per cent of the commitments made for the state in the AP State Reorganisation Act, 2014. Naidu will also call the bluff of the BJP that if the Centre could not deliver SCS, it was verboten under the recommendations of 14th Finance Commission.

In addition to this, Naidu is also expected to stress the need for release of funds for Polavaram project as it is a national project. This apart, Amaravati, development of backward areas, establishment of Kadapa steel plant and creation of railway zone with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters will also figure in his address.

That Naidu wants to further turbo-charge the agitation against the Centre was evident from his address at a public meeting at Kovuru in West Godavari district on Thursday where he made no bones about his intent to inflict on BJP a death by thousand cuts.

The Chief Minister will also utilise the occasion to take pot-shots at Jagan Mohan Reddy and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan for hobnobbing with the BJP, which he says had betrayed the interests of the state.