Andhra Pradesh has witnessed several chief ministers emerging from Rayalaseema region in the past. During the combined Andhra Pradesh era, there were several CMs like Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Damodaram Sanjeevaiah, Kotla Vijayabhaskar Reddy, N T Rama Rao (representing Tirupati and Hindupur), N Chandrababu Naidu, Y S Rajasekhar Reddy and N Kiran Kumar Reddy.
After the state bifurcation in 2014, too, Chandrababu Naidu again from Chittoor was the first chief minister. In spite of having seen so many chief ministers from the region, Rayalaseema continued to remain backward due to lack of proper irrigation facilities and perennial drought.
Now, YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is second chief minister from Rayalaseema in the divided Andhra Pradesh, has vowed to make Rayalaseema fertile during his regime.
He declared at a meeting in Kadapa that he would bring Godavari and Krishna waters to Rayalaseema and irrigate its parched lands at a cost of Rs 60,000 crore.
He announced that the Pothireddypadu project canal would be expanded to divert more waters from Krishna river to Rayalaseema at Rs 23,000 crore and also proposed to link Galeru-Nagari project with Handri-Neeva to bring more area under cultivation.
Jagan’s action plan has obviously made it to the headlines in all the major dailies in Andhra Pradesh, irrespective of their political affiliation.
Eenadu focussed on Jagan’s plan for linkage of Galeru-Nagari and Handri-Neeva projects; while Andhra Jyothy highlighted the diversion of Godavari waters to Rayalaseema and Sakshi gave a comprehensive report of Jagan’s irrigation plans for drought-prone Rayalaseema.
More than such an important development, Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy sought to highlight a negative report as their lead stories. It was on the Central Administrative Tribunal’s strong comments against Jagan government for allegedly harassing IRS Jasti Krishna Kishore by filing the ACB cases. Both the dailies tried their best to convey to their readers that the Jagan government was intimidating a central officer only for investigating into Jagan’s business dealings in the past.
Similarly, both Eenadu and Andhra Jyothy continued to publish big stories on the ongoing agitation by farmers of Amaravati region against the proposed shifting of administrative capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam. As usual, they gave big coverage to the TDP president’s call to the farmers to continue their strike. As usual, Sakshi ignored the same.
Instead, Sakshi highlighted President of India’s letter to Union home ministry to order probe into the alleged financial irregularities by former Union minister and BJP Rajya Sabha member Sujana Chowdary.
At the same time, it also carried a couple of positive reports on the government like collection of local taxes by village secretariats and Ethiopia team’s appreciation for Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in Andhra Pradesh.
The notification issued by the Centre to commence national population register and census and the clarification given by Union home minister Amit Shan that there is no connection between NPR and NCR were also a major news in the dailies on Wednesday.
