Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has two faces. One, he exhibits while addressing the gullible public of state during his tours in the districts; two, his natural face, that has an extreme weakness for splurging public money for his royal life style.
We don’t have figures to compare Naidu’s life style with the CM’s of other states. Still we can argue that Naidu would be in the top two most expensive among the Indian chief ministers. The governmental spending to make his life comfortable, secure and showy is going on unabated.
As long as he was in Hyderabad, taxpayers money was spent like water to meet his ostentatious life style- in secretariat, lake view guest house and his private residence. The this spending spree shifted to Vijayawada too, now . Though he is living in a private (Lingamaneni) guest house, the government is spending money as if it is his permanent residence. If the expenditure on his showy public life and tours between Hyderabad and Vijayawada, is put together, more than a hundred crore is said to have been spent.
Whenever on tours in districts interacting with the poor farmers, self help group women, weavers etc, his constant refrain is that ” We have no capital. We are denied revenue from Hyderabad. Chief minister is working from make shift houses, My ministers and officers have no houses in Vijayawada. Centre has not fulfilled its commitment.” On some occasions, he gave an impression that the state had no money even to pay salaries. The pet media amplified this to impose Naidu’s cinematic difficulties on people. This is all amid the growing cost of maintaining CM’s life pompous, which is no way lesser despicable than the life style of any of the dictators our era.
On Monday, the state government released Rs 2.27 crore to make his Lingamaneni Guest House at Undavalli village, Tadepalli Mandal, Guntur district, fire secure. The money will be spent on-
1.Power fence with Alarm System
2.Sufficient illumination all around the perimeter and to cover the river bank
3.Fire Safety Recommendations
4.Installation of CCTV Surveilance System on the lines of the system provided in the residence of the Hon’ble CM at Jubilee Hills, Hyd’bad
5.Uninterrupted Power Supply
6.Intercom telephone lines and EPABX System
And again on Wednesday, government gave administrative sanction to spend Rs 1.48 crore ” towards meeting the expenditure for purchase of one Stride MK 1 Jammer for use in the convoy CM and to clear off the pending bills pertains to supply of security related equipment”.
The government has already spent huge money on deploying the Stride MK 1 Jammers in CM’s convoy. On October 9, 2014, Rs.3,07,79,000/-(Rupees Three Crores Seven Lakhs Seventy Nine Thousands) had been released for the procurement of vehicles and STRIDE MK 1 Jammer for the Hon’ble CM convoy at Vijayawada. This money had been released in relaxation of ban on purchase of vehicles and economy measures. This means, the government has spent about Rs 4.50 crore just on the purchase of Convoy Jammers for CM Naidu. According to sources in the government, Stride MK 1 is a specially customized four-wheel-drive luxury vehicle, equipped with a fully integrated broadband jamming system. This covers, continuously and simultaneously, the RF communication frequencies most commonly used by the terrorists to detonate road-side bombs.
Apart from this, about Rs 100 crore has been reportedly been spent for the construction of a helipad, laying roads to connect the guest house to the main roads, to remodel the guest in tune with the taste of the family members of the Chief minister etc.
This is the way the chief minister of a state, which was made to ‘suffer financially’ in every conceivable way by the bifurcation, has chosen to live in Andhra Pradesh.
