Not many know that Hyderabad-based Zulfi Ravdjee was appointed AP Government’s Special Representative for Middle East and Far East countries. Surprisingly, this GO was released in November, 2019, itself but the government kept it a closely-guarded secret. It became known only after Ravdjee led a delegation of senior AP IAS officers to hold industry talks with Saudi Arabia government recently. Eventually, details came out that Ravdjee is getting payments, benefits and allowances on a par with a Minister. It may be known how Telangana persons are given top advisors posts in AP government media affairs and also in Sakshi media.
No other Indian state has such a post in Middle East. Even Kerala doesn’t have a Special Representative. Kerala does have a Minister post for Gulf affairs but that is to take care of only welfare of lots of Keralites living in emirates. By comparison, AP people are working in Gulf in such large numbers. There is also no big industry linkages between AP and emirates. Even Ras Al Khaimah, one of the seven emirate countries, is unhappy with AP. Ras Al Khaimah made hundreds of crores investments in Vanpic project. It filed cases to recover this money. It is there in one of Jagan CBI illegal assets cases. Nimmagadda Prasad, closely associated with this, was arrested in Serbia. Against this issue, suspicions are growing on true job of AP Special Representative post.
