Chandrababu Naidu trades barbs with CM Jagan, backs his own decision of capital selection

Telugu Desam Party Chief (TDP) Chief N Chandrababu Naidu of Friday strongly refuted the charges by YSRCP government that the former TDP regime did not bring any development in Amravati but only showed graphics to the people of the state's capital.

"CM Jagan and his ministers were making false claims of 'graphics' only to destroy the high potential, dream capital of Andhra Pradesh out of political vendetta," Naidu said.

Naidu also rejected the charges by the YSRCP that the TDP made, the selection of Amravati as the capital, unilaterally. He also cited statistics of the survey made by him before selecting Amravati, to back his argument.  

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"The decision was taken only based on many strong parameters including the fact that more than 50 percent people told the Sivaramakrishnan Committee that they would favour location of capital between Vijayawada and Guntur. Over 4,700 people expressed this opinion while only 507 people preferred Visakhapatnam, 360 persons Kurnool and 265 for Ongole," he added.

Naidu left the decision to the people to think whether the selection of Amravati as the capital was the right decision or not as the capital city was equidistant to the farthest locations of the state from either side. The distance from Amaravati to the farthest ends on either side is 600 km. Naidu stated that Andhra Pradesh needed a huge capital city to get the kind of development and prosperity that was being witnessed in the neighbouring states. He even supported his argument by giving figures of the contribution of the capital cities of other states to their total revenue generation. 

"Kolkata was contributing 76 per cent revenue to West Bengal, Hyderabad 60 per cent to Telangana, Mumbai 57 per cent to Maharashtra, Bhubaneswar 56 per cent to Orissa and Chennai 39 per cent to Tamil Nadu. Similarly, Amaravati was visualised as a model city with lots of potentials to create its own revenue generation for the entire state," the TDP chief said.

Stating that the only way to stop the destruction of the capital city at the hands of YSRCP was for the people to come together against the decision of the government, Naidu appealed to the people to create awareness and intensify the agitation to save the capital city Amravati which has the potential to become a dream city. 

Naidu opined that the only path taken by the Andhra CM was to destroy the entire State by going ahead with multiple capitals.

(With ANI inputs)

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