*Chandrababu’s Amaravati, capital of corruption*

Tadepalli, April 1: Former Chief Minister and YSRCP President YS Jagan Mohan Reddy termed Amaravati as the capital of corruption, with Chandrababu engineering unprecedented and impractical policies to enrich him and his coterie and putting the future of the State at stake. 

Speaking to the media here on Wednesday, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy called the bluff of Chandrababu and questioned where he would get the Rs 2 lakh crore money and how long it would take to complete Amaravati. 

When Chandrababu boasted that the capital city is a self-financed model, why were loans taken, allocations made in the budget, which all pointedly speak of the rampant corruption and the layers of scams involved from land acquisition to tendering process and the exorbitant rates being given to the favoured contractors.

Keeping in view of the exorbitant cost and with a view to not burdening the people and continuing the welfare and development process, we have opted for three capitals and chosen Visakhapatnam as the executive capital, as it already has the infrastructure and with little investment, it would serve the purpose. For regional balance, we kept Amaravati as the Legislative Capital and Kurnool as the Law Capital.

We are not against Amaravati or any other region; we are only opposing the rampant corruption in the name of corruption, how other regions are being neglected, how welfare and development is coming to a grinding halt with the single-mindedness and high focus on only Amaravati. We have also given a Plan B to develop the Machilipatnam-Vijayawada-Guntur corridor as the capital region, but it was also not considered. 

Chandrababu has been going ahead with his corrupt practices and speaking of a capital which is tall in talk, exorbitant in cost and pushes the state into a debt trap. We are concerned about the finances of our state and will expose all the scams, he said. 

The resolution for capital city in Assembly is only to divert the attention of the people, as the Centre has nothing to do with capital of any state. When Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand were formed, the Centre did not mention the capital cities. 

While passing the resolution, the Council was not taken into confidence, as Chandrababu’s corruption would be exposed. 

The State has drawn Rs 13,000 crore, of which Rs 5,300 crore went back in commissions in the form of a mobilisation advance. 

Giving out the details of the cost of the five towers, he said the price being paid to contractors is over Rs 14,000 per sft, while in quality construction at development cities, the cost is just Rs 4,000 over and above the generous exemption being given to them. The contracts were given to the same building for the same project, but with double the price, which shows the level of corruption.
For flyovers, he has been spending Rs 170 crore per kilometre, while we have spent Rs 35 crore per km, which shows the stark contrast.  

When the entire focus is concentrated on Amaravati, other welfare schemes in the fields of education, health, and agriculture take a back seat, and all sections of people are affected. The much hyped one lakh acre capital city is now reduced to only 200 acres, which, sans international airport, no nine cities, no international stadium and other high-end infrastructure, as was evident from Chandrababu’s recent speech in the Assembly. 

Our priority is the welfare of people of all regions and to develop a growth engine that would stand testimony to the future, he said.