A lot was expected from Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu when he turned himself into ‘Srimanthudu’ and adopted Pedalabudu panchayat consists of 21 villages including Littiguda and Araku, one of the familiar tourist spots in Visakhapatnam district, one and a half year ago. The villagers dreamed of turning their long-neglected tribal hamlets into model villages with the chief minister himself adopting them. But nothing this sorts has happened. Now, the villagers are hoping against hope that the AP CM would bring a turnaround in their lives.
It all happened in January 2015 when Naidu himself had announced that he would be adopting the Pedalbdudu panchayat and promising an allround development of the villages. Forget about development, but till now, the CM had no time to even visit his adopted villages and not even a single paise was spent on development of the villages.
To make matters worse, the only elementary school in the panchayat was shut down in April last year. In the midst of all, nearly Rs 2 crore was spent towards arrangements for Naidu’s proposed visit to the panchayat, including Araku for the launch of developmental works. But, Naidu ended up cancelling all the four scheduled visits so far. Villagers now rue that some development could have happened if that money had been spent on works like laying of roads etc.
The Villagers recently staged a protest over the closure of the school, which forced the 23 tribal students to travel nearly two to three kilometres everyday for their studies since the last academic year. Instead of reopening the school, the state government has proposed an international school and star hotels here.
On one occasion, HRD minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao along with the collector had visited Araku on October 5, 2015, to check the arrangements of a scheduled CM tour. However, the visit was cancelled following strong protests by the tribals against the state government’s proposed bauxite mining. The HRD minister had then said the CM was planning to announce nearly Rs 25 crore worth of development works including nine anganwadi centres, a model school and infrastructure projects.
The villagers have been for long pleading for developmental works like drinking water, roads, reservoirs for agricultural needs of farmers, hospitals, electricity supply, streetlights, transportation and medical facilities.
Except Araku, none of the villages under Pedalabudu are well developed. Nearly 20,000 residents of the gram panchayat have been eagerly waiting for a glimpse of the chief minister since he adopted their panchayat early last year.
