In wake of the letter written by BJP President Amit Shah and the response of Chandrababu Naidu in the State Assembly, it should be noted that:
In the letter Amit Shah has mentioned about the Special Package in lieu of Special Category Status (SCS) in a matching manner and the Andhra Pradesh government has also staked claim for the Package as its achievement. Two years later, it (TDP) has taken a U-turn and started chanting the SCS tune, which lost its relevance with the announcement and implementation financial packages, it was mentioned in the letter.
It is pertinent to note that the details of the letter are baffling. The fallacy lies in the very premise of presuming that the Special Package is in lieu of SCS and equating the two without taking the salient features of SCS into account.
Without taking into consideration the incentives that come with the SCS and without considering the fact that the state debt has risen from Rs 97, 000 crores (accumulated through 60 years) to Rs 2.25 lakh crores in the past four years due to financial indiscipline, how can anyone equate SCS to Special Package and how can it be told that it was agreed for Special Package?
Without the incentives and exemptions like waiver of 100 % Income Tax, GST, rebate in power tariff and the like how can Andhra Pradesh compete
With Chennai of Tamil Nadu, Bengaluru of Karnataka or Hyderabad of Telangana? It took over 60 years for these cities to be developed and they are ahead of us by as many years. How can we attract investors to create IT hubs, setting up of industries or hospitals in face of the stiff competition of
the neighbouring state capitals?
Without such infrastructure and employment generation activities, how can we expect the youth to get jobs and stay back in the state and be part of the development process?
While bifurcation of the state, the treasury and opposition benches in the Parliament have joined hands and have unanimously agreed for the SCS.
BJP and TDP have favoured SCS and in the run-up to the 2014 elections, Sri Narendrra Modi had assured of SCS in the Tirupati public meeting. Both the Parties have included the SCS issue their respective election manifestos.
•Now BJP claims that it has done a lot to Andhra Pradesh while Chandrababu Naidu claims that nothing has been done to the State. The raging debate yields nothing and it is only SCS that will bring in development to the state. Do not ignore the fact that the future generation would be getting jobs only if industries come up in a big way which is possible only with SCS. The state debt has mounted to RS 2.25 lakh crores from Rs 97, 000 crores.
Our slogan ‘SCS is our right, do not be cheated with Special Package’ has proved to be the correct, appropriate and has gained more and more acceptance as it is only the relevant solution.
SCS is our lifeline, without which our State cannot progress. Hence, our struggle will continue beyond no-confidence, resignations and it will be accelerated further to achieve the intended goal.
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