YSR Congress accused that in the name of sand policy, chief minister Chandrababu Naidu had been covertly helping the sand mafia in plundering the state’s scarce natural resources at will.
There had been brazen abuse of authority in fixing the price of sand and also in mining, which benefited the ruling party leaders immensely,party senior leader Botsa Satyanarayana told reporters here on Thursday.
“The price of sand per cubic meter was drastically increased by TDP government in north coastal districts from Rs 40 to Rs 550 per cubic meter and reduced at some other places. In the entire exercise, according to CM himself, the revenue accrued should have been over Rs 3,000 crore. But, what the state had got was pittance- just Rs 850 crore. The rest had gone into the pockets of those people close to powers that be,” he said and added that the matter should be probed.
Talking about the floods in parts of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, Botsa urged the State Government to take effective measures in extending help to Telugu people in Chennai, who were badly hit by torrential rains.
“Parts of Chittoor and Nellore were also affected and the state should provide effective relief measures, he said. Raising the issue in the Lok Sabha YSRCP MP, Mekapati Rajmohan Reddy sought liberal central help, he added.
Taking strong objection to the arrest of party leaders in Visakhaptnam today, Botsa said ‘the arrest of YSRC party leaders, who were on their way to submit a representation to the District Collector over the failures of TDP government in controlling prices of essential commodities is reprehensible. The police had arrested them immediately after they left the party office and took them to far off police stations. which shows the intolerance of TDP government,’ he said.