Indicating that all is not well with TDP-BJP alliance, BJP senior leader Somu Virraju today took strong objection to state government appropriating all central programs as TDP government’s initiatives.
The Saffron party is planning to tell the people of Andhra Pradesh, which were the developmental works taken up with the funds released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and which were state’s own works.
The BJP is embarking on a mission to prove that what TDP government had done in the past 22 months was negligible and all the visible development was done with the funds provided by the Prime Minister Modi’s government. The BJP was peeved because all the central money was spent without using Prime Minister’s photograph anywhere and the picture of chief minister Chandrababu Naidu alone was being displayed. BJP is embarking on a program to place the facts before the public from next week onwards. This was revealed by Virraju today.
Why suddenly BJP grew hostile to TDP, an NDA ally?
There has been suspicion among a section of BJP, that Naidu may distance from BJP and attribute the reasons for his failures in the state to the Centre. Somu Virraju, an MLC, is for debunking it before it is too late.
Virraju is in the forefront of the race for post of state BJP unit president. The BJP is on the lookout of an able leader to lead the party in Andhra Pradesh as a replacement of K Haribabu , now party president and Visakhapatnam MP. His term has expired but a strong lobby is working for his continuance. There is even talk that TDP has favored Haribabu.
Somu Virraju, , is a vocal leader of the party and wants the leadership to maintain some critical distance from the ruling TDP for the transformation of the Saffron party into an independent organization in AP. While Haribabu is a Kamma leader, Virraju is from aspiring Kapu community. Media reports say BJP central leadership is favoring Virraju. From TDP’s side, Chief Minister Naidu seems to have got disillusioned with Modi’s government and there has been talk that alliance may not last long.
Against this backdrop, on Tuesday, Somu Virraju, decried that Chandrababu Naidu was usurping central scheme and publicizing them with his photograph as his programs.” Centre has released Rs 1000 crore for rural roads. But, the program has become Chandranna Bata in AP . Entire credit being credited to Naidu’s account. This is unfair,” Virraju said in Tirupati, where he attended a program organized to commemorate Babu Jagajivan Ram, ” The centre has given more funds to capital Amaravati than what was allocated by Andhra Pradesh government,” the BJP MLC claimed. CM Naidu, according to Virraju, shows unusual interest in implementing the central schemes, because, it was where money was aplenty.
He said the campaign to educate the people about central funding in the development would begin from April 14 and come to a close on April 24. During the ten-day campaign BJP will organize meetings at village level and discuss the problems being faced by the people. The party would take up the issues raised in the meetings to the notice of centre and state. He said centre was responsible for the present uninterrupted power supply in Andhra Pradesh.
