Can Naidu Listen to His Former Aide’s Suggestions ?

State government coercive method to force the villagers give up their lands to make room for Express Highways in the Capital region, and Houses by residents in Vijayawada to relocate the offices from Hyderabad has come in for severe criticism from none other than chief minister Chandrababu Naidu’s former aide Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao

Two days back, addressing media, Chandrababu Naidu became impatient at the spiraling rents in Vijayawada ever since he announced the plan to make Vijayawada temporary capital.

He asked the city residents, to slash rents and make sacrifice to make Vijayawada attractive for outsiders. Similarly, the CM was unhappy at farmers who are not ready to sacrifice for the world-class capital. He refused to accommodate the view of the farmers in the master plan in order to alter the alignment of Expressways. He said farmers should come forward to make Amaravati a global city with Express Highways and made it clear government would go ahead in laying the Express Highways. He even chided the cabinet minister who assured the farmers that they would be taken into confidence in the finalization of comprehensive master plan -2050. Farmers in the capital region are opposing that laying of express highways as the alignment is passing through the villages which warrant their dislocation from the villages.

Reacting on this Sobhanadreeswara Rao advised Naidu to take the school buildings owned state Municipal Administration minister P Narayana. “The Chief Minister is asking the farmers and the people of Vijayawada to make sacrifices, why he is not asking his cabinet colleague P Narayana to spare some of the buildings of his educational institutions in Krishna and Guntur districts to house the secretariat on a temporary basis,”, Rao asked.

Once close aide of Naidu, Rao was agriculture minister during NTR time and was special representative of Andhra Pradesh government in New Delhi with a cabinet rank. Coming from socialist background, Sobhanadreswara Rao is known for integrity and hard work. He is an expert in agricultural matters.

Rao also questioned the need to spend Rs 150 crore to raise ad hoc structures to locate secretariat while claiming day in and day out that division of the state landed the successor state of Andhra Pradesh in penury.

“The amount of Rs 150 crore is tax-payers’ money.

Why should the State Government acquire an additional 7500 acres of land for Outer Ring Road in capital area, when the need for it would arise only after 30 years,” Rao asked.

He said Amaravati doesn’t require an Outer Ring Road while Vijayawada city was in bad need of an ORR.

Raising objecting to the government proposal to rage the Tummalapalli Kalakshetram to construct an ultra-modern convention centre, Rao said there was no need for any is convention centre Vijayawada, when a state of the art convention centre was coming at a stone’s throw at Amaravati.