Andhra Pradesh Congress is on Friday organizing protests across the state for denying Separate Railway zone to the state of Andhra Pradesh as promised in the state reorganization act,2014.
Commenting on the Rail Budget presented to the parliament today, APCC president N Raghuvira Reddy said the budget of Suresh Prabha dashed the hopes of Andhra People.
Raghuvira blamed chief minister Chandrababu Naidu for the rail minister’s apathy towards Andhra Pradesh. ” It is Chandrababu Naidu’s trade off of state interests for the personal gains and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attitude to AP are responsible for this poor allocations for the state in the rail budget 2016-17″ Raghuvira said.
The APCC president demanded apology from the union ministers who kept on feeding wrong information about the Vizag Railway zone ignoring the fact that the subject had become an emotive issues for the people of Andhra Pradesh.
“Till last week, a union minister from the state was telling the media that Railway Board had okayed the file related to the Vizag zone,” he said.
“As per the schedule 13 of Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2014, centre has to create separate zone for Andhra Pradesh besides arranging rapid rail connectivity between Amaravati, Vijayawada, Guntur and Mangalagiri town. But the railway minister has totally ignored all these important items in the budget,” he said.
Wondering if the centre was trying to privatize the railways, the Congress leader said there was no clarity in the budget with regard to the resources available for the completion of the numerous pending projects in the state.
” A mere statement that the government was committed to complete all pending projects was not enough to complete the projects which have been moving at snail’s pace. The rail minister failed to give his plan of action how he is going to complete these projects without making adequate allocations,” Raghuvira said. He dubbed this was first railway budget which offered neither a new train nor new line to the people of the state.
” The objective of the state wide protest by the Congress workers is to expose chief minister Naidu’s inability to get funds and projects to the state. The rail budget bears testimony to the “importance” the centre attached to the state,which is an NDA partner. Naidu should be squarely blamed for all these lapses,” the APCC president said.
