: Is Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu weakening Andhra Pradesh’s strong case on Special Category Status (SCS) by shifting his stand on the matter time and again?
YSR Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy felt so at a media conference here on Saturday and substantiated his argument by playing the video clippings of Mr. Naidu taking varying stands on SCS on different occasions.
Referring to the statement of Union Minister of State for Home H.P. Chaudhury in Parliament on Friday, Mr. Jagan said the Minister had made it clear that there was no need to give SCS to A.P. despite a consensus on it in Parliament before the passage of the AP State Reorganisation Act. All political parties had included the promise of SCS in their election manifestos to do justice to the State and wanted it for 10 years at least.
With no SCS, the prospects of new industries coming to State have declined as there will be no tax concessions. Special status would have paved the way for flow of investments and generated lakhs of jobs, he claimed.
Though Mr. Naidu and NDA constituents were aware of benefits of SCS, they were coming out with the argument that it was not a panacea. It was Mr. Naidu’s stand that emboldened the Union Ministers to come out with statements denying SCS to the State, he said.
YSRC supremo wonders why the CM was not serving ultimatum on the NDA govt.
