Undeterred by Telangana chief minister KCR retaliation against his decision to sit on a fast opposing Palamuru-Ranga Reddy and Dindi project, YSRC president Jaganmohan Reddy launched frontal attack on Telangana and AP governments. He said while the Telangana government was going ahead on these project which would spell disaster for Andhra Pradesh, AP CM Chandrababu Naidu was not able to question the legality of these projects. These projects would deny water to eight districts in Andhra Pradesh, aggravating the drought situation in the state, Jagan warned in a public meeting organized at Macherla.
YS Jaganmohan Reddy led a dharna and demonstration of empty vessesl at Macherla, Guntur district, against the government’s apathy towards drought and failure to launch relief measures.
This was part of the state-wide pretest program the party had organized today, and the first in the series of programs the opposition party has planned against the TDP government.
There is a pattern in Jagan’s attack on Chandrababu Naidu. He highlighted two things: Naidu’s submission to Talangana chief minister following the cash-for-vote scam and diversion of central funds. The latter is the new theme Jagan picked up after his interactions with union home minister Rajnath Singh and finance minister Arun Jaitley last week in New Delhi. Never did diversion of central figure so prominently in Jagan’s criticism against Naidu as happened today.
Jagan accused CM of diverting the funds of employment guarantee program for farm workers for laying cement roads and Neeru-chettu programs.
” I am not opposed to the cement roads and neeru-chettu. But the central funds meant for MNREGS are being diverted to other programs cutting the livelihood of the poor and farm laborers. Out of the Rs 4500 crore released by the centre, Rs 2500 crore have been diverted this way,” he said.
” There were no serious efforts to come to the aid of the farmers,” Jagan alleged.
“There was no advance contingency plan to provide enough drinking water. There has been no response on the demand of farmers for input subsidy. Though the government promised Rs 1000 cr in 2014-15 for input subsidy, not a single paisa has been released so far,” Jagan said addressing an impressive gathering of people on midsummer midday.
The opposition leaders said chief minister Chandrababu Naidu had not reviewed the severity of drought situation in the state for long and added that since February only one review meeting had been held.
” There is no water in Srisailam. Unless there is water in Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar won’t get water.
Instead of thinking of water for farmers, Naidu allowed Telangana to divert 115 TMC of Krishna water to Mahabubnagar . Naidu had no courage to ask KCR about this. Because, he is an accused in the case related to buying of TRS MLAs and he is dead scared of prosecution. Si he is winking at these projects,” Jagan said.
He alleged that Naidu had cancelled many project like Buggavanka vagu project which Rajasekhar Reddy planned to address the drinking water problems in towns and villages. He said the present water crisis in Macherla was the result of such cancellation of an important project.
Stating that YSRC won’t allow this type injustice continued in the state, Jagan urged the people to extend support to the fight till justice was achieved. Later, he submitted a memorandum to the local MRO on the drought situation in the state.
