Nalgonda: Congress MP Gutha Sukender Reddy on Tuesday urged the Centre not to grant special status to Andhra Pradesh, which would indirectly impact the growth of Telangana State. The Nalgonda M P has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, strongly opposing the special status to Andhra Pradesh.
 
Informing about it, at a media conference here, Sukender Reddy said  the issue of granting special status to any State depended mostly on its economic backwardness, distance away from ports, lack of access to trade or industry or its general inaccessibility.

Himalayan States and border States were thus qualified to get special status. Therefore, the demand of Andhra Pradesh, which had an excellent industrial base, good access to ports, irrigation facility, road and rail connectivity, for special status goes against the entire history of granting special status to any State in India, he felt.
 
“If a well-developed State like Andhra Pradesh gets special status, then every State will demand such status and it would mean that larger States would also qualify and competitive advantage will result in distortions. In particular, Telangana will get severely affected since special status for Andhra Pradesh encourages industries to shift to A P which indirectly affects Telangana state,” he opined.
 
Stating that Andhra Pradesh had good economy and was richly endowed with natural resources, except the problem of setting up of new capital, the Congress M P felt that the Centre might extend financial help to AP to build a new capital. Coming down heavily on Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for announcing construction of houses for poor in the areas of Osmania University, whose students had played a crucial role in Telangana agitation, he said it was very unfortunate that the students of Osmania University, who registered protest for protection of the lands of their university, were arrested by the police in TRS government.

He dared Chandrashekar Rao to take back hundreds of acres, which had been allocated for SEZs and cine studios by the earlier governments, which were not utilised for the allocated purpose, and use those lands to construct houses for the homeless poor.  He also alleged that the TRS government had prepared an action plan to sell out all the valuable lands of government offices at division centres and district headquarters.

• Says only Himalayan States, border States qualified for the special status
• A well-developed State like AP shouldn’t be awarded special status since it will attract industries and affect the growth of Telangana
• Slams KCR for trying to usurp OU lands for constructing houses for the poor
• Claims that KCR is hell-bent on selling out valuable govt land bank in district headquarters