Despite tall claims by Telugu Desam Party president and AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu over his intense lobbying with Prime Minister Narendra Modi over development of the State, the NDA government has meted out humiliation to the State with paltry allocations in the Central Budget.
The biggest humiliation and shock was allocation of Rs 3 lakh to Visakhpatnam metro rail. This money is not even sufficient to purchase stationery material like pencils and papers for such a massive project, leave alone conducting survey.
It is not enough even for supplying tea and snacks to the staff who sit and do the paper work. This is nothing but ridiculous.
For Polavaram project, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely allocated a meagre amount of Rs 100 crore for the second consecutive year.
The project is supposed to be taken up as national project as per the AP Reorganisation Act, but the Centre is releasing peanuts and the amount is not sufficient even to dig the soil, forget purchase of materials.
It has allocated just Rs 1 crore for the Tribal University and another Rs 1 Crore for the Central University.
The only significant allocations are for IIIT (Rs 20 crore), Tirupati IIT (Rs 40 Crore), Vishakapatnam IIM (Rs 30 Crore), Tadepalligudem NIT (Rs 40 Crore), Tirupati IISCR(Rs 40 crore).
So, what do you do now, Mr Naidu? Will you dare come out of the NDA in protest?
